Edweard Muybridge was an English photographer known for his work in photographic studies of humans and animals in motion and in motion-picture projection.
Fig 1 – Some of Muybridge’s work
In viewing his work, a question that came to mind was why in all the time he spent photographing motion between the late 1870s to 1890s, Muybridge always chose to compile his images in the form of grids (Fig 1), and never experimented with alternative forms of taking / presenting his photos like for example in the ways that Étienne-Jules Marey did, using multiple exposures. In researching the answer to this question, I came upon some of Muybridge’s personal history that informed me that he had not only suffered a violent head injury but had also murdered the man he believed to be the true father of his son. The Atlantic suggests that the former injury led to Muybridge developing obsessive compulsive disorder, which evoked in him an all-consuming fixation with capturing movement, while Tate Etc. theorizes that the trauma inflicted upon his psyche by the latter altercation is what prompted his desire to “control and repeat” elements in his work.
At first sight, Muybridge’s photography is devoid of any suggestion at all of the suffering he has been through in his life. But reading about it has been particularly intriguing for me, as it is a testament to the fact that even pioneering work like Muybridge’s is not devoid of the influence of personal experience. Having always been interested in exploring the impact of personal experiences on identity and then reflecting that in my artworks, developing a better understanding of how Muybridge’s history is implicitly reflected in work has prompted me to more deeply consider the personal metaphors contained within the processes employed by artists, rather than just the meaning conveyed by the product of their work.
Furthermore, as we discussed during class, his work had a significant impact on other fields of art such as painting and sculpture and paved the way for techniques in animation and cinema. However, personally, the focus on the human body in his photography and the naturalistic way in which he portrays the figure in his pictures is highly reminiscent of Classical sculpture. There is quite an evident focus on the musculature and anatomy of the figures that he photographs, which is a preoccupation that existed even in Classical art. Apart from this, having attended a museum exhibition on Minimalism last year, I find that Muybridge’s influence can also be seen in many ways in this movement. For example, the geometricity and repetition in his works (i.e. through composition and the grid layout of his photos) reminds me of the paintings of Frank Stella (Fig 2) and his ideology of conveying meaning through the arrangement of figures and shapes rather than some underlying gestural meaning that they contain.
Fig 2 – Die Fahne Hoch! by Frank Stella
Provided References:
Etienne Jules-Marey 1
Etienne Jules-Marey 2
The Scientist Who Shot His Photos with a Gun and Inspired Futurism
Work from:
26th Oct 2020 – Daily Vitamins Assignment
Time with Professor Mike Rader
