For those previously unfamiliar with the work of Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) the Tate gives an excellent introduction. The exhibition is broken down into areas of his interest or periods of discovery through his travels to give a comprehensive, broadly chronological, overview of his work. It demonstrates that Muybridge was not only an inventor, making his own equipment able to capture his iconic images of motion and then display them with an animated projector, but also a successful scenic photographer, winning a medal in 1873 from the International Exhibition in Vienna, and important documenter of the rapidly developing Western states of America.
Muybridge was actually born in Kingston-upon-Thames, England, where he also died. It is rumoured that he studied photography back in England during the American Civil War, though all his better-known works were made in the States. His work is particularly significant because of its timing. After the Civil War, new planes were being developed, railroads laid and the Gold Rush meant that immigration increased. Discovering new technology and photographic approaches meant that Muybridge was always at the forefront of important change, documenting the ‘new nation’ – his images of San Francisco as a new town are fascinating and his earlier stereoscopic works capturing the sublime Yosemite Valley come to life with handheld 3d viewers.
He was a restless man and famous for his pride and perseverance: It was on his second attempt that he managed to create equipment efficient enough to capture a still of the galloping horse to prove that all four hooves did simultaneously lift off the ground; and tales are told of his ‘flying studio’, where he would cut down trees that interfered with his view or would insist on being roped down into pits with his camera for the best shot. However, his pride also extended into his private life. In 1874 when Muybridge discovered that his young wife’s child was illegitimate he shot the real father and had the son orphaned. When Muybridge was subsequently acquitted of ‘justifiable homicide’ his wife, Flora Downs, sued for divorce, at which point Muybridge departed for work in Central America and Flora suddenly died.
The latter focus of the exhibition is on Muybridge’s commissioned ‘781’ (he only ever made 200) plates Animal Locomotion. But because of the nature of ‘moving image’ photography, much of the work is repetitive and the exhibition occasionally feels a little dry – one is less inclined to study each of the 22 images of the walking baboon when they realize there is the equivalent for the buffalo, cockatoo, chicken and walking human. However, this is the inevitable short-coming of an exhibition celebrating a dated science within our contemporary technological society. We must not forget the significance of his work within its context and the impact of his photography upon studies of anthropology, technology and art today, which can be seen in the work of Francis Bacon and Marcel Duchamp to the pages of the National Geographic.
‘Eadward Muybridge’ is well curated – even the corridors between rooms are decorated with mirrors and fractured dividers to compliment his ‘zoopraxiscope’ (animal action viewer) as one walks through – whilst the selection of work and informative reading panels reveal the multitudinous levels that Muybridge worked within to successfully break the boundaries and conceptions of the limits of photography.
Eadweard Muybridge is in until 16 January 2011 at Tate Britain, London
www.tate.org.uk
Image credit: Leland Stanford jr on his pony Gypsy / phases of a stride by a pony while cantering.
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