FLAT // LAND & Eadweard Muybridge
July 15, 2024
Until 1 September, the Rijksmuseum presents ‘Stop Motion’, a photography exhibition featuring works by two photographers known for capturing animal movement for the first time: Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) and Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904).
It was 1872 when Muybridge decided to use a series of cameras to solve the mystery of whether all four hooves of a galloping horse lift off the ground at the same time. He discovered that the hooves do lift, but in a very different manner from the way artists had always depicted them.
Muybridge and Marey’s works fundamentally changed how we think about photography. The images they produced in the late 19th century – sequential photographs of people walking, horses at a gallop, their movements broken down frame by frame – have become iconic.
They mark an important moment in the history of science, photography, and art where the camera – as both a scientific and artistic tool – began to be seen as superior to the human eye. These photographs are also considered as precursors of film, in their ability to create the illusion of fluid movement.
* Muybridge’s seminal work resulted in a book, Animal Locomotion, which unites 781 photographic plates that examine the movements of diverse animals, including humans, in slow motion.
Image: Eadweard Muybridge, Gallop, Thoroughbred Bay Horse Bouquet (1887), photography, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
Credits to Rijksmuseum’s Photography Curators, Hans Rooseboom and Mattie Boom.