Helmut Gernsheim & Alison Gernsheim, The History of Photography: From the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era

The photography of movement 439
leaping, birds flying, athletes wrestling and turning somersaults, etc., 'j ust as if it were
all happening in real life'. It was a sensation no one wanted to miss. Scepticism was
overcome, and the influence upon art of Muybridge's work was incalculable, though
many artists maintained, not without reason, that if they were to depict the attitudes
which Muybridge had proved correct, they would represent positions too fleeting
for the human eye to perceive. Hence, it could be argued, fast animal movement is a
subject ideally suited to photography, but not to painting-if naturalistic representation
is regarded as the ideal, as it was in the nineteenth century.
Muybridge's photographs taken in Palo Alto in 1878 and 1879 had demonstrated
certain movements, but with the comparatively slow wet collodion plates it had been
impossible to obtain essential details of rapid muscular action. When the highly
sensitive gelatine dry plates came on the market, he was convinced that a more
systematic and comprehensive investigation would provide a great deal of further
information.
Muybridge' s investigations fo r the University of Pennsylvania. So far Muybridge had
only pointed the way to a new field of research, but thorough investigation would
involve heavy outlay, and all the publishers whom he approached after his return to
the United States in October 1882 shrank from the magnitude of the scheme. But one
J. B. Lippincott, a benefactor of the University of Pennsylvania, interested the Provost,
Dr William Pepper, in the contemplated investigation. The University was
willing to sponsor the work, provided that a scientific committee of the University
should supervise it. THOMAS EAKINS of Philadelphia, America's super-realist painter,
who based his art on scientific principles, was a member of this committee. He was
critical of Muybridge's use of a battery of cameras instead of Marey's single camera
method. Constructing a camera with two disk shutters, one revolving eight times as
fast as the other, and making nine or ten exposures on one plate, Eakins-contemporaneously
with Muybridge-made an independent series of experiments for the
University, and produced pictures of horses and nude athletes which are practically
indistinguishable from Marey's.
In the spring of 1884 Muybridge recommenced work, this time making use of three
batteries of twelve cameras for taking front, side, and back views. The cameras were
electrically operated by a clockwork device which made it possible to vary the
exposures and the intervals between them, for slow or quick action. Twelve successive
exposures made from three different points of view simultaneously could be
completed in t second.
The general arrangements were similar to those at Palo Alto, but to facilitate
calculation of the movements, the canvas background was divided (like graph paper)
by cords into 20 in. squares, each subdivided into 2 in. squares. If the subject was light
coloured the canvas was black and the cords white ; if the subject was black, white
canvas was used with black cords. The distance between cameras and subject was
usually 49 ft. Slow movements were photographed with lenses of 3 in. diameter and
15 in. focal length, the centres of the lenses being 6 in. apart. Rapid movements were
taken with lenses of 1-!- in. diameter and 5 in. focal length, the centres of the lenses
being 3 in. apart.16 From these figures the width of the cameras can be deduced as
6 in. and 3 in. across the front, the plate size for the latter being approximately I in. x
1
.
1-z m.
Human movement was recorded for both sexes and all ages, clothed and naked, at
work and at play, and in almost all possible actions, the majority of the models being
students or graduates of the University. Wild animals were photographed at the
zoological gardens of Philadelphia in the summer and autumn of 1885, after which
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