FLAT // LAND & Eadweard Muybridge
July 15, 2024
This summer, the Rijksmuseum presents ‘Stop Motion’, a photography exhibition with works by two photographers known for capturing, for the first time, animal movement: Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) and Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904).
It was 1872 when Muybridge decided to use an installation 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 work 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 – was found to be 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.
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Image: Eadweard Muybridge, Gallop, Thoroughbred Bay Horse Bouquet (1887), photography, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.