Description
Before cinema existed, he taught the world to see motion. In this compact biography from Reaktion’s acclaimed Critical Lives series, scholar Marta Braun traces the sensational life of Eadweard Muybridge — the restless, brilliant photographer who froze time, and accidentally invented the movies.
Hired by railroad magnate Leland Stanford to settle a famous wager, Muybridge rigged a row of cameras along a racetrack and proved a galloping horse lifts all four hooves off the ground. The resulting Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (1878) stunned the world. He didn’t stop there: his zoopraxiscope projected moving images years before the Lumière brothers, and his vast Animal Locomotion studies mapped how humans and animals move, frame by frame.
Braun sets these triumphs against a turbulent personal story — including a sensational murder trial — for a full portrait of a visionary equal parts genius and eccentric. Concise, vivid, absorbing.
Before cinema existed, Eadweard Muybridge taught the world to see motion. In this compact biography from Reaktion’s acclaimed Critical Lives series, scholar Marta Braun traces the sensational life of the restless, brilliant photographer who froze time — and accidentally invented the movies.
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Hired by railroad magnate Leland Stanford to settle a famous wager, Muybridge rigged a row of cameras along a racetrack and proved that a galloping horse lifts all four hooves off the ground. The resulting images, Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (1878), stunned the world. But Muybridge did not stop there: his zoopraxiscope projected moving images years before the Lumiere brothers, and his vast Animal Locomotion studies at the University of Pennsylvania mapped how humans and animals move, frame by frame.
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Braun sets these triumphs against a turbulent personal story — including Muybridge’s sensational trial for the murder of his wife’s lover — to paint a full portrait of a visionary who was equal parts genius and eccentric. Concise, vivid, and absorbing, this is the ideal introduction to the man who made motion visible.
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