Essential Films Canon

Eadweard Muybridge must have been far more interested in artistic representation than in science when producing Child Bringing Bouquet to Woman (1887). There is ample movement that could serve the study of locomotion, but the emotional warmth of this sequence suggests a rare attempt at narrative bui… →

Woman Throwing Baseball (1887) is a collection of photographs depicting women repeating the action of kneeling to pick up a baseball and then throwing it high into the air. Featuring multiple female subjects of diverse ages and physiques, and captured from various angles, this study takes Eadweard M… →

Over time, Louis Le Prince’s Man Walking Around the Corner (1887) remains a simple yet ambitious experiment. A labourer, in soiled clothes, leaves his work, staring intensely at Le Prince’s sixteen-lens camera. The new device, unlike any of its predecessors, was an all-encompassing apparatus allowin… →

Eadweard Muybridge’s fascination with the nude resembles the concern classical artists had with the body. His Woman Walking Downstairs (1887) takes the simplicity of the act to celebrate human beauty within a new art-form. Conversely, a quarter of a century later, Marcel Duchamp pushed the boundarie… →

Horse gaits never ceased to feature as subject matter in Eadweard Muybridge’s output since his initial successes in California in 1878. Produced within a decade, Man Riding Jumping Horse (1887) was shot in Philadelphia, featuring Daisy passing over a hurdle. The sequence of photographs still demonst… →

Part of Eadweard Muybridge’s studies on locomotion, Woman Hopping on One Foot (1887) clearly demonstrates the scientific purpose of his work. Shot from the front, back, and side, the woman is seen hopping on her left foot, her body tilting slightly, while her arms carefully maintain balance with eac… →

Boys Playing Leapfrog: Side View (1887) was intended as a scientific study of human locomotion, following Muybridge’s Athletes series at Palo Alto Stock Farm. These photographs from Philadelphia, taken a few years later, exhibit significantly improved visual quality, allowing close observation of in… →

Because parrots are swift fliers, Eadweard Muybridge’s ambition to record them using chronophotography invites admiration. Cockatoo Flying (1887) is an early example of a bird in flight. For the first time in history, scientists gained the opportunity to analyse in detail the movement of avian wings… →

Capybara Walking (1887) is one of Eadweard Muybridge’s more exotic works on animal locomotion. Commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania, this set of chronophotographic studies was deemed to have contributed to a number of biological sciences, further expanding knowledge of the behaviour of dif… →

On first encounter, Woman Picking up Skirt (1887) appears as a simple exercise in filming the act of bending down. Shot from multiple angles, the subject performs a reverse turn and lifts her dress train. However, given that Eadweard Muybridge presents a model whose dress covers most of her body, an… →

Woman Jumping from Rock to Rock (1887) is a collection of chronophotographic studies depicting, from different angles, a woman jumping on rocks, either bare-handed or holding various items. Whereas this sequence is rich in its diversity of scenes, it is neither revealing in terms of scientific inter… →

Once experimentation moves into mass production, it is inevitable that some works suffer a decline in quality. Crossing Brook on Step-Stones with Fishing Pole and Can (1887) shows that Eadweard Muybridge envisaged an artistic role for moving images in our society, though it is quite baffling what he… →

From the prehistory of film, animals have been featured in motion pictures. The ethical treatment of animals was only formally regulated nearly a century after the invention of the medium. Eadweard Muybridge’s Chickens Scared by Torpedo (1887) is an early chronophotographic sequence that challenges … →