Slashing Time: How Eadweard Muybridge Invented the Film Auteur with ‘Athlete Swinging a Pick’

Athlete Swinging a Pick is one of Eadweard Muybridge's early chronophotographic works featuring athletes performing various acts. This series stands out for three reasons: first, the principal actor is Muybridge himself; second, the motion is not actually continuous, unlike others from the same period; and third, the subject of movement is not a specific sporting activity, but rather one more closely related to agriculture or mining. Nonetheless, the pick is not used for the intended activity, but arguably it is just a simulation. The initial reaction is to view this as a pointless act, and yet this whole setting is what makes this particular work significant in the pre-history of cinema.

Like many of the early film directors, Muybridge was not specifically trained in performance or the visual arts. He took up photography as a technical profession[1], his work predominantly inspired by that of Carleton Watkins[2]. His amateur eye captured the unexpected, creating broken frames of nature. The spontaneity breathes through the static images without ever attempting a true representation of reality itself. The lack of context provided Muybridge with the essential ingredient that led him to his landmark success of capturing reality, not through reproduction, but rather through an acceptance that the fleeting moment can only be illusionary. Akin to the filmmakers who followed, Muybridge was a Renaissance man living within the newly built industrial world. Similar to how the current developers of artificial intelligence started, he understood that technology in its raw forms, though eventually capable in concept, can only produce imperfect works that resemble reality and are not a copy of it.

Sallie Gardner at a Gallop, and later more schematically Skeleton of Horse, succeeded in reproducing the illusion of continuous movement precisely because it didn't matter if every split second was captured in the photograph. As Émile Reynaud proved with his animation works in 1878, the trick was to invent a machine capable of switching images fast enough so that the human eye could interpret motion by using our cerebral capability of linking information from the past with that of the present, and consequently predicting the future[3]. True artists would have struggled with this implementation, as they would have insisted that authentic motion needed to be recreated by human ingenuity at the point of capture and not in later post-production stages. Precisely because Muybridge was not a fully-fledged artist, it allowed him to accept shortcomings to gain advantage over his more experienced peers in the world of photography.

Athlete Swinging a Pick is one of the first productions that had the subject moving at a fixed point rather than on a horizontal plane. We can see that, as a result, each individual frame misses significant movements in the rotation of the body, but when displayed using the fast rotation of the Zoopraxiscope, the viewer recreates the missing images. In doing so, Muybridge also improved on Reynaud's Praxinoscope by adapting it to moving photographs rather than drawings. This particular feature allows one to accept the disjointed images of this series as forming a continuous whole.

But why should we consider Athlete Swinging a Pick superior to other contemporary works portraying individuals anchored to a fixed position, such as Athletes Boxing, which feature more frames, thus exhibiting smoother continuity? To answer this, we must focus on other factors.

The use of a pick as a prop for this short is a curious one. There is no rock in sight, nor is Muybridge using the tool for breaking up hard ground. At the centre of the image, he simply swings the pick around his body. Given Muybridge's intention to use his invention for the study of human locomotion, we could argue that, at its most basic level of interpretation, the short could be useful to understand what musculature was used when a pick is lifted and thrown onto a solid surface. In practice, this is an acceptable explanation of this work; however, it falls short in explaining why Muybridge chose to stage this particular act, and moreover why he chose to play the central role.

If we are to consider film as an art form, then we must allow other facets to influence our appreciation of a work. Even rudimentary productions such as Athlete Swinging a Pick contain the ingredients that could permit them to amount to more than just a technical experiment. The argument here must focus on the symbolism brought forth by Muybridge's presence and the specificity of his actions. The tool moves with the intention of breaking something. In the absence of the hard surface, the only substance left is air. However, given that each movement is trapped by a static photograph, Muybridge's actions are, therefore, attempting to slash through the singularity of a point in time in order to liberate photography from its stillness. Ultimately, the act is one of slashing atemporality to achieve the linearity of time. If Fontana's cut canvases have redefined the concept of a painting, this work gave Muybridge the means to redefine the practice of photography into a new moving art form.

With this work, we see the first glimpses of how moving images could create art in themselves. The film director, at heart, requires a vision that is complete enough in ambition to allow for multiple interpretations, rather than a solitary explanation, more common in scientific output. By appearing naked in front of the camera, performing an act of cutting time, Muybridge invited us to see him as a Hellenistic deity, capable of changing the fabric of known life. As a result, we could argue that this is the origin of the film auteur, a visionary generating ideas by being involved in every aspect of the production.

Sadly, there is little evidence from Muybridge on his intentions for each individual series of photographs, except his general commitment to the study of locomotion. Given that we find in his later works many scenes that hardly advance anatomical science, such as Child Bringing Bouquet to Woman, it is tempting to assume that Athlete Swinging a Pick hides an artistic meaning, either as outlined above, or as John Ott has argued, a visual polemic against Stanford, by portraying the exploited miners building the Central Pacific Railroad[4]. In seeking out archaic cinematic jewels, this particular work offers plenty of food for thought.

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References:

[1] Clegg, Brian. The Man Who Stopped Time: The Illuminating Story of Eadweard Muybridge — Pioneer Photographer, Father of the Motion Picture, Murderer; p. 27. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2007.

[2] Green, Tyler. Carleton Watkins: Making the West American; pp. 371–374. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2018.

[3] Charton, Édouard (editor). Le Magasin Pittoresque: Quarante-septième année, 1879; pp. 228–229. Paris: Le Magasin Pittoresque, 1879.

[4] Ott, John. Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California: Cultural Philanthropy, Industrial Capital, and Social Authority; p. 114. London & New York, New York: Routledge, 2016.