Another sequential photographer:

Eadweard Muybridge is another photographer that I would like to look into with great detail. He was a photographer in the 19th century, he was one of the most formative of the modern Western world. The 19th century was as bent on progress, invention and innovation as Muybridge. He had a lot of capacity for entrepreneurial and progressive practice, due to all of this he invented photographic and moving image projection techniques which we use now. Muybridge also captured some major events, like the social and cultural landscape of the 19th century. Eadweard Muybridge collections, (no date).

There are many themes of 19th century life in Eadweard Muybridge's photography; the growth of capitalism, nationalism and international trade, the new modes of transport which allowed this to happen, in addition the emergence of a new leisured middle class within the capitalism economic system. These themes that appear throughout Muybridge's photography help individuals understand the 19th century life and photographic work can reveal social and political attitudes and gives an understanding to the ideological system which underlie them. Eadweard Muybridge collections (no date).

Muybridge's experiments in taking motion photographs began in 1872, the railroad magnate, Leland Stanford hired him to provide proof the specific movement of a trotting horse's gait, as all four legs are off the ground simultaneously. However he was unsuccessful in this as the camera he was using lacked a 'fast shutter'. The project was then interrupted as Muybridge was being tried for the murder of his wife's lover. Eadweard Muybridge (no date).

The horse in motion.
Eadweard Muybridge, 1878
Owned by Leland Stanford; Running at a 1:40 Gait Over the Palo Alto Track.

Eadweard Muybridge's work was widely published, most often in the form of line drawings taken from his photographs. However his work was highly criticised by individuals who thought that the horse's legs could never assume such unlikely positions. In order to counter this criticism Muybridge started holding lectures on animal locomotion. The lectures that he held were illustrated with a zoopraxiscope, this was a lantern that Muybridge had developed which projected images in rapid succession onto the screen from the photographs that were printed on a rotating glass disk, therefore producing the illusion of moving pictures. The zoopraxiscope display was an important predecessor of the modern cinema. Eadweard Muybridge (no date).

Capybara Walking, Plate 746 from Animal Locomotion.
Eadweard Muybridge, 1887
Part of ''Animal Locomotion: An Electro Photographic
Investigation of Consecutive Animal Movements, Vol.11''.
Image: 9 3/8 x 11 1/8 inches (23.8 x 28.3cm) Sheet: 19 x 24 1/8 (48.3 x 61.3cm)

I have learnt quite a lot about Eadweard Muybridge, personally I didn't have any idea what a zoopraxiscope was until I started to research him, I also didn't know that he was the individual who conceived the idea of it. In addition to this I think he was in a very important time frame as he was able to document a lot of different new things that individuals at the time did not know, for example the way the horse's legs move under different circumstances. I have also learnt that he has a whole collection of animal locomotion, which is very interesting. Eadweard Muybridge's work is very interesting and it was a pleasant experience researching him and his work.

References:

Eadweard Muybridge collections (no date) Muybridge. Available at: https://www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk/muybridge_image_and_context/introducing_muybridge/ (Accessed: January 17, 2023).

Eadweard Muybridge (no date) Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eadweard-Muybridge (Accessed: January 19, 2023).

Belden-Adams, D.K. and Belden-Adams, D.K. (no date) Eadweard Muybridge, the Horse in Motion, Smarthistory. Available at: https://smarthistory.org/eadweard-muybridge-the-horse-in-motion/ (Accessed: January 19, 2023).