Photography and Motion

English photographer Eadweard Muybridge began his pioneering work into the study of motion in 1878. Using multiple cameras with high-speed film, Muybridge established for the first time the stride of a galloping horse, as well as a host of other motions too fast for the eye to follow. He changed the way we see the world. And, by breaking motion down into a series of static frames, his work beckoned the way to re-animation of static sequences as movies.

Around the same time, French photographer Étienne-Jules Marey perfected a method for superimposing multiple moments on a single photograph, as for example the image of a pelican landing.

Both photographers’ influence can be seen in one of the most famous works of Modernist Art, Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, as well as Futurist works like Giacomo Balla’s 1912 Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash.

• Muybridge, Horse’s Gallop (1878)
• Marey, Pelican landing (1882)
• Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (1912)
• Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912)