Athlete Flip Flap

In Athlete Flip Flap (1881) we see a young man perform a clean backward somersault. The movement is full of precision, proving that in certain disciplines techniques have barely changed in more than a century. As a sequence of photographs, this composite work by Eadweard Muybridge proves useful in the study of locomotion, each individual image clearly presenting the bodily position required for the acrobatic feat, as well as the muscle groups engaged in the action. However, given that these images could only have been shown using the zoopraxiscope, the repetition of the scene in a loop becomes somewhat confusing. This is a prime example of how technology limits the quality of a work borrowed from another medium.