Buffalo Running

Eadweard Muybridge made Buffalo Running (1883) over one hundred and forty years ago, yet its importance lasts to this day as the first nature documentary. A precursor to his seminal Animal Locomotion series, this short proto-film establishes a foundational framework for the director’s style. The precision of the subject’s movement is gracefully enhanced by the photographer’s artistic framing. The buffalo once reigned over the American grasslands, yet by 1883 they had become nearly extinct following the mass slaughter of the 1870s. Recording this footage at the time became not only necessary for raising awareness of a species’ demise, but it could also have been one of the few records left in history for us to witness the beauty of the species. Muybridge’s documentary, possessing a unique mathematical poetry, is therefore both aesthetic and scientific, and most importantly of paramount historic value.