Eadweard Muybridge, Turning around in surprise and running away, 1884/86
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Muybridge set up not one, but three separate batteries of cameras in front of a screen that has been painted black and covered with a gridded outline, where he captured phases of human and animal motion across in rapid succession from three angles simultaneously.
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2020-11-21T18:57:35-08:00
Muybridge made these photographs at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He set up not one, but three separate batteries of cameras in front of a screen that has been painted black and covered with a gridded outline, where he captured phases of human and animal motion across in rapid succession from three angles simultaneously. In this example, the five columns of images suggest he used five different cameras in each battery; hence, a total of fifteen cameras were used to make this image. The grid allows anyone viewing this photograph to extrapolate measurement data, which would tell us how far exactly the woman moved when she recoiled or how wide her legs stood when she was surprised.
Obviously, these images have more going on in them, besides just an objective study of nature and scientific measurement. Muybridge photographed his subject nude, prioritizing the human body and the mechanics of movements. This results in a strange eroticism being present in his photographs. This is representative of another dimension of photography, and one that is very important to science—namely, its ability to let us see the unseen. In the Victorian era, stripping for a camera was something only a prostitute would do, so it was very radical in terms of social norms and conventions and attitudes to the human body that Muybridge photographed people from all different social classes in the nude. The prevalence of nudity in his photography also alludes to the nudity seen in classical oil paintings, creating another tie between the scientific and artistic qualities of his work.
In his effort to conduct a scientific study on how humans move, Muybridge also reflected on social conventions around nudity and propriety. By depicting this woman turning around and running away, he also gave his photographs a narrative dimension, in excess of a clearly avowed project of studying motion for its own sake. This is very important, as it represents the intersection between photographs being used for scientific observation versus photography being used as an imagined narrative—two uses at opposite ends of the spectrum between art and science. It also makes us question whether photography can really be used exclusively for science, or whether it will always be a part of the narrative world as well.
