St. Olaf College

Eadweard Muybridge

photography
England
1830 - 1904

View objects by this artist.

Eadweard Muybridge was born Edward James Muggeridge in 1830 in Thames. He would adopt the Saxon spelling of his name early in his life. In 1852, he came to the United States and began work as a publisher and book-dealer, however he would return to England by 1960. There, he would begin his photography practice. In 1967, he relocated back to the United States, and began selling photographic views of California under the pseudonym, ‘Helios.’ It was at this time that Leland Stanford commissioned him to photograph a moving horse.

From 1873 to 1877, Muybridge would abandon the experiment to travel to Central America, not to be picked up again until he returned to the United States. He would design a faster shutter and shorter exposure technique in order to successfully capture each stage of the motion of a trotting horse. It was these photographs that would make him an important public figure in photography. He would invent the ‘zoopraxiscope,’ which was a projecting device for drawings of his photographs. In 1884, he began working at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was able to continue his experiments in capturing motion with multiple cameras. His photographs were reproduced in his publication, ‘Animal Locomotion.’ Muybridge’s works are considered fundamental to the modern motion picture.

Madison Duran ‘20
March 2019

Sources:

“Murderer, Ex Athlete and Photographic Pioneer Eadweard Muybridge.” I Spyer, I Spyer, 20 Oct.
2010,
www.nicholasspyer.com/2010/10/20/murderer-ex-athlete-and-photographic-pioneer-ead
weard-muybridge/.
“ULAN Full Record Display (Getty Research).” Union List of Artist Names, J. Paul Getty
Museum, Los Angeles,
www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=&role=&nation=&prev_page=1&subjectid=50
0115207.