Eadweard James Muybridge:
Here is an question and answer session of Eadweard Muybridge:
Beginnings of Stop- Motion.
- Why did you create this sequence of stop motion images?
A wager was set by Leland Stanford, a former governor of California, (to whom Stanford University is named after, among other notable estates.) Stanford was a horse owner - race horses in particular -and he made a wager that a trotting horse's hooves couldn't all be off the ground at the same time. In other words, at least one foot had to be on the ground at any given moment. It's alleged that Stanford just wanted to find out if it was true, but in equine circles, they say he was trying to study horses' gaits to improve their training. Either way, Stanford contacted me, as I had been doing photographic landscape experiments and asked him if there was a way to satisfy his curiosity. In 1872, I had begun experimenting with an array of 12 cameras photographing a galloping horse in a sequence of shots. However, my initial efforts seemed to prove that Stanford was right, but he didn’t have the process perfected. I had then proved that, for a brief moment, all four of a horse's legs leave the ground.
- What did you go on to study next?
The original moving pictures of that experiment no longer exist, but I went on to study other 'bodies in motion' and his famous galloping Horse in Motion footage as well as bison, sheep, and many different studies in human motion are still around.
- I heard you invented something what was this and was it useful to your studies?
I went on to show my work using a device I invented called a zoopraxiscope, which spun a disc similar to an old fashioned record-player, but instead of grooves on the record there were photos that passed under an eyepiece like binoculars. The spinning disc made the images appear to blend together, thus, many still frames of moving images made up a movie, which is actually similar to the frame-by-frame technology used today.
- I’ve been told you change your name more than your facial hair, why is this?
People commonly mistake my name to be Edward Muybridge, but my name was just as much changed and mistaken during my own lifetime. I was born Edward James Muggeridge, has been listed as Muggeridge and Muygridge after moving to America, revised it to Edwardo Santiago Maybridge while in central America, changed his first name to Eduardo after a Saxon King, and was conferred as Professor Muybridge. The last form on his gravestone is Eadweard Muybridge. He also published some of his work under the name Helios. One thing that never changed though was his beard. Apart from when he went grey.
- You seem to have created two panoramas of San Fransisco, one measuring up to one seventeenth foot long?
I created two Panaromas of San Francisco, as the city he was largely based in during my time in America. A fire destroyed the glass plate negatives of the first panorama created in 1877, so I had set about creating another Panorama a year later. It is estimated that it took 15-25 minutes to expose each of the 13 glass plates. - Francis Bacon has some copies of your own work, of “Humans in Motion” was quite exciting for you to hear about? Many of my stills served as inspirations for Francis Bacon’s own work, which always drew from photographs. I had studied motion drew countless inspiration for other Artists including Edgar Degas and Marcel Duchamp.
- What would you say you are best known for?
I would have to say my photography of moving animals that captured movement in a way that it had never been done before. My work was used by both scientists and artists
- What other occupations did you have during your early career? I started a career as a publisher's agent for the London Printing and Publishing Company, and as a bookseller. At the time, the city was booming, with 40 bookstores, nearly 60 hotels and a dozen photography studios. Later in my life I wrote about also having spent time in New Orleans and New York City during my early years in the United States.
- Have you had any influences on other people?
Étienne - Jules Marey — recorded the first series of live action photos with a single camera by a method of chronophotography
Thomas Eakins — American artist who worked with and continued Muybridge's motion studies, and incorporated the findings into his own artwork
William Dickson — credited as inventor of the motion picture camera
Thomas Edison — developed and owned patents for motion picture cameras
Marcel Duchamp — artist, painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
Harold Eugene Edgerton — pioneered stroboscopic and high speed photography and film, producing an Oscar-winning short movie and many striking photographic sequences
Francis Bacon — painted from his photographs
John Gaeta — used the principles of his photography to create the bullet time slow-motion technique of the 1999 movie the Matrix.
Steven Pippin — so-called Young British Artist who converted a row of Laundromat washing machines into sequential cameras in the style of Muybridge
Wayne McGregor - UK choreographer collaborated with composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and artist Mark Wallinger on a piece entitled "Undance", inspired by Muybridge's 'action verbs'.
According to Tate Britain, "His influence has forever changed our understanding and interpretation of the world, and can be found in many diverse fields, from Marcel Duchamp’s painting Nude Descending a Staircase and countless works by Francis Bacon, to the blockbuster film The Matrix and Philip Glass’s opera The Photographer."
A wager was set by Leland Stanford, a former governor of California, (to whom Stanford University is named after, among other notable estates.) Stanford was a horse owner - race horses in particular -and he made a wager that a trotting horse's hooves couldn't all be off the ground at the same time. In other words, at least one foot had to be on the ground at any given moment. It's alleged that Stanford just wanted to find out if it was true, but in equine circles, they say he was trying to study horses' gaits to improve their training. Either way, Stanford contacted me, as I had been doing photographic landscape experiments and asked him if there was a way to satisfy his curiosity. In 1872, I had begun experimenting with an array of 12 cameras photographing a galloping horse in a sequence of shots. However, my initial efforts seemed to prove that Stanford was right, but he didn’t have the process perfected. I had then proved that, for a brief moment, all four of a horse's legs leave the ground.
- What did you go on to study next?
The original moving pictures of that experiment no longer exist, but I went on to study other 'bodies in motion' and his famous galloping Horse in Motion footage as well as bison, sheep, and many different studies in human motion are still around.
- I heard you invented something what was this and was it useful to your studies?
I went on to show my work using a device I invented called a zoopraxiscope, which spun a disc similar to an old fashioned record-player, but instead of grooves on the record there were photos that passed under an eyepiece like binoculars. The spinning disc made the images appear to blend together, thus, many still frames of moving images made up a movie, which is actually similar to the frame-by-frame technology used today.
- I’ve been told you change your name more than your facial hair, why is this?
People commonly mistake my name to be Edward Muybridge, but my name was just as much changed and mistaken during my own lifetime. I was born Edward James Muggeridge, has been listed as Muggeridge and Muygridge after moving to America, revised it to Edwardo Santiago Maybridge while in central America, changed his first name to Eduardo after a Saxon King, and was conferred as Professor Muybridge. The last form on his gravestone is Eadweard Muybridge. He also published some of his work under the name Helios. One thing that never changed though was his beard. Apart from when he went grey.
- You seem to have created two panoramas of San Fransisco, one measuring up to one seventeenth foot long?
I created two Panaromas of San Francisco, as the city he was largely based in during my time in America. A fire destroyed the glass plate negatives of the first panorama created in 1877, so I had set about creating another Panorama a year later. It is estimated that it took 15-25 minutes to expose each of the 13 glass plates. - Francis Bacon has some copies of your own work, of “Humans in Motion” was quite exciting for you to hear about? Many of my stills served as inspirations for Francis Bacon’s own work, which always drew from photographs. I had studied motion drew countless inspiration for other Artists including Edgar Degas and Marcel Duchamp.
- What would you say you are best known for?
I would have to say my photography of moving animals that captured movement in a way that it had never been done before. My work was used by both scientists and artists
- What other occupations did you have during your early career? I started a career as a publisher's agent for the London Printing and Publishing Company, and as a bookseller. At the time, the city was booming, with 40 bookstores, nearly 60 hotels and a dozen photography studios. Later in my life I wrote about also having spent time in New Orleans and New York City during my early years in the United States.
- Have you had any influences on other people?
Étienne - Jules Marey — recorded the first series of live action photos with a single camera by a method of chronophotography
Thomas Eakins — American artist who worked with and continued Muybridge's motion studies, and incorporated the findings into his own artwork
William Dickson — credited as inventor of the motion picture camera
Thomas Edison — developed and owned patents for motion picture cameras
Marcel Duchamp — artist, painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
Harold Eugene Edgerton — pioneered stroboscopic and high speed photography and film, producing an Oscar-winning short movie and many striking photographic sequences
Francis Bacon — painted from his photographs
John Gaeta — used the principles of his photography to create the bullet time slow-motion technique of the 1999 movie the Matrix.
Steven Pippin — so-called Young British Artist who converted a row of Laundromat washing machines into sequential cameras in the style of Muybridge
Wayne McGregor - UK choreographer collaborated with composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and artist Mark Wallinger on a piece entitled "Undance", inspired by Muybridge's 'action verbs'.
According to Tate Britain, "His influence has forever changed our understanding and interpretation of the world, and can be found in many diverse fields, from Marcel Duchamp’s painting Nude Descending a Staircase and countless works by Francis Bacon, to the blockbuster film The Matrix and Philip Glass’s opera The Photographer."