Athletes Fencing

Given that fencing was first regularised in 1880 in London, Muybridge’s sequence of photographs Athletes Fencing (1881) offers direct evidence of the growing popularity of the sport in its early days. The moving images could have served as educational material for those seeking to understand the new format more effectively than through static photographs, thereby providing an additional application for Muybridge’s work beyond scientific use. Such works had the potential to become acts of entertainment in themselves, allowing the consumption of sport to occur independently of attendance at events. From its earliest stages, we witness the multi-dimensional functions that motion pictures could serve in a modernised world.