Stopped Time: The Motion Studies of Eadweard Muybridge
by Gregg Chadwick Eadweard Muybridge Muybridge Animal Locomotion, plate 288 circa 1887 © University of Pennsylvania | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu "....'See how curiously,' said Mr. Muybridge, referring to a photographic series (Plate 288 shown above) of one of our most prominent University baseball nine, 'and yet how perfectly, this plate illustrates the occurrence of an error in catching.' True enough. In the successive pictures the ball is muffed, strikes the player's thigh, runs up under his arm and across his back, while he is looking eagerly on the wrong side for it." - The Pennsylvanian , 1886 In the 19th century the railroad, the telegraph and the camera transformed our experience of space and time. JMW Turner's painting Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway documents in oil paint the beginnings of this perceptual shift. In Turner's work, the powerful steam engine races from the painting's perspectival vanis...