Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was a British-American photographer who became (and still is) famous for his motion studies of humans and animals. His first experiments expanded into a megaproject encompassing some 28,000 photographs.

Muybridge began photographing horses in 1872 for a Californian racehorse owner. His aim was to discover whether horses’ hooves all leave the ground at the same time when they gallop. The answer was yes!

Almost all Muybridge’s shots of horses were taken at a racecourse in Philadelphia, but he photographed other domesticated animals, as well as people, at many other locations. Wild animals, he photographed at the zoo.

Muybridge made 95 plates of horses moving at various speeds: trotting, cantering and galloping. The photographer sometimes had trouble keeping up with their movements – some of the horses moved slowly, while others thundered past him.

Horses’ legs can move so fast our eyes don’t see exactly what’s going on. In 1878, Muybridge’s first photographs showed that artists had portrayed the legs of galloping horses incorrectly – proving the camera sees more than the human eye.

Muybridge’s photographs are seen as the precursors of film. Displaying his photos in sequence creates the illusion of fluid movement for the human brain – just like film. But film hadn’t even been invented yet!

Muybridge’s book Animal Locomotion contained the results of his work: no fewer than 781 plates of 9 or more photographs of horses, elephants and other animals – including humans. In fact most of the photographs were of people in motion.

Four institutions in Amsterdam were immediately interested in owning some of Muybridge’s images. The Rijksakademie bought nearly 100 prints, and the University of Amsterdam, Artis Zoo and the Rijksmuseum also purchased several of them.

Each plate cost one dollar, so the total price soon mounted up. A complete set of 781 prints cost 600 dollars (after 600 prints, the rest were free). Many institutions only bought a selection of prints because 600 dollars was a huge sum in 1887.

The exhibition presents 24 of the captivating photographs from the Rijksakademie collection, alongside several drawings and prints of galloping horses – some portrayed correctly, some incorrectly.