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Photo: Elizabeth Mann
Edgerton, Trotting, Stride
Photo: Elizabeth Mann

Edgerton, Trotting, Stride

Date1887
Label TextIn May 1872, Muybridge made his first photograph of a horse trotting on a racetrack in Sacramento, California. From 1884 to early 1886, he would take over 20,000 photographs documenting various stages of human and animal activity. Muybridge's working method involved at least two units of twelve cameras each to record these rapid movements in real time. As photography historian Keith Davis perceptively wrote: "Indeed, these pictures generated much discussion on the nature of vision and representation-the difference between 'normal' and 'instantaneous' impressions, for example, and the correspondence between scientific and artistic truths." When viewing these sequences on a rotating projector lantern apparatus, Muybridge's photographs were set into motion and essentially signaled the birth of motion pictures.
Object number93.55
Photo CreditPhoto: Elizabeth Mann
Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, "Smoke and Mirrors", May 10 - November 9, 2008 Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, "Five Installations on the Fourth Floor: Horses", June 26, 1997, (6/26/1997)
Credit LinePhotography Purchase Fund
DimensionsSheet h.: 9 1/8 in. Sheet w.: 11 7/8 in. Image h.: 4 5/8 in. Image w.: 8 in.
MediumCollotype
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
1884
Object number: 93.56
Photo: Scott Leen
1934
Object number: 85.235
Transcription of a Chinese Classic
early 19th century
Object number: SC97.17
Trotting Horse
Greek
ca. 480 B.C.
Object number: 61.84
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
1973
Object number: 76.87.4
Mauermeister (Mason)
August Sander
ca. 1929
Object number: 77.5
Eduardo Calderón
1983
Object number: 83.104