Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge 

Muybridge was an eccentric English inventor/photographer, who became known to the world as a leading pioneer in motion photography. He became renowned for his work on animal locomotion, which involved using multiple cameras to capture motion in stop action photography. Muybridge produced at the time ground breaking photographs where he developed a miraculous process for capturing movement on film, which in turn laid the groundwork for the motion picture industry.

Muybridge died on May 8, 1904 at his birthplace. His contributions to art and photography spurred the works of other inventors, including Thomas Edison and Etienne-Jules Marey. Muybridge’s innovative camera techniques not only enabled people to see what our naked eyes could not pick up, but also formed an important scientific study that also contributed to the development of moving film. He created an array of  beautiful and fascinating sequence of images that to this day continue to inspire us.                   In 1872, the former governor of California Leland Stanford, a race-horse owner, hired Eadweard Muybridge to undertake some photographic studies. Stanford had reputedly taken a bet on whether all four of a racehorse's hooves are off the ground simultaneously. On 15 June 1878, Muybridge set up a line of cameras with tripwires, each of which would trigger a picture for a split second as the horse ran past. The results, as shown in this plate, settled the debate.