What is your favourite GIF? Is it a purring cat, a baby making faces, or a sequence from a popular movie? GIFs have become immensely popular in an age driven by instant messaging.
Part of the charm of using GIFs lies in the fact that it reveals the world as we see it, providing a window into actions and emotions as they unfold. Over a century before GIFs came to be, photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge provided a taste of what was to come by studying motion using photography and by also working on motion picture projection.
Born in 1830, Edward James Muggeridge adopted the name Eadweard Muybridge, as he thought that it was the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name. As a 20-year-old, he moved from England to the U.S., where he started a career in publishing and bookselling.
Bookseller turns photographer
During one of his trips to pick up books in the early 1860s, Muybridge was involved in a stagecoach crash in which he had severe head injuries. He spent about six years recovering in England and his physician recommended that he pick a vocation that would let him spend more time outdoors.
So when he returned to San Francisco in 1866, he was a photographer. Muybridge wasn’t just any photographer, however, but someone who mastered the technicalities and the artistry involved in photography, evident through his work in Yosemite Valley.
The bet
His images caught the attention of Leland Stanford, a businessman and racehorse owner (he went on to become the founder of Stanford University along with his wife Jane in 1885). Stanford had wagered that when a horse is trotting, there is a particular moment when all four of the horse’s legs are airborne. As this was against the popular opinion, Stanford decided to hire Muybridge to settle the bet.
Eadweard Muybridge.
Muybridge didn’t have the best of starts. As his camera lacked a fast shutter, his initial efforts were unsuccessful. Issues in his personal life further delayed the project. It was 1877 when he resumed these experiments in photographing motion.
Muybridge’s design for a sequential camera along with the improvements in shutter technology allowed them to prove that a horse indeed has all four legs off the ground in a particular instant while trotting. Muybridge, however, wasn’t entirely satisfied. He wanted to slice the moments that make these movements and then piece them all together using his photos.
Invents zoopraxiscope
Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope to meet this need. This device used his images, which were printed on a rotating glass disc, and projected them onto a screen in rapid succession.
Using his zoopraxiscope, Muybridge gave lectures on animal locomotion throughout the U.S. and Europe. On March 13, 1882, one such lecture was held in front of a sell-out audience at the Royal Institution in London. Among the crowd were members of the Royal Family, including the future King Edward VII.
An original disc of Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope. | Photo Credit: Eadweard Muybridge
Even though Muybridge had a fallout with Stanford, he retained his interest in photographing motion and studying it. One of his lectures at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1883 earned him the trust of a group of Philadelphians.
With the backing of the University of Pennsylvania, Muybridge made important photographic studies of motion in the three years from 1884 to 1887. With over 1,00,000 images of animals and human beings, he created a compendium of photographs, selections of which were published in 1887 through a subscription-based portfolio.
Muybridge worked until 1900, when he retired to his birthplace in England, where he eventually died in 1984. Despite his eccentric nature and the personal flaws in his character, there is no denying the fact that Muybridge’s work was an innovation both in photography and in the science of movement. His zoopraxiscope, which created the illusion of moving pictures, turned out to be an important precursor of modern cinema.
