Edweard Muybridge

Edweard Muybridge

Edweard Muybridge born Edward James Muggeridge raised Kingston England born April 9 1830.

Edward muggeridge left school but with a sense that he did not accomplish much and wanted to make his name known. He decided to leave England to move to America to start a career. He started out as a bookseller and then proceeded to learn photography in which he became excellent is this field and started out as a photographer mainly doing landscape photography.

Around the time of these events was the time of the industrial revolution in which invention was starting to grow as well as the growth of America. Upon his travels across America in a stage coach there was a unfortunate accident in which the stage coach crashed. Edward now Edweard Muybridge was recovering from the crash during the six months of this incident his vision became blurry and distorted. He could see double a so a single person would have a copy in them selves as a sort of 3D effect.

Shortly after this Muybridge starting his photography again after his recovery this then made some very odd and dark photos in this sort of self made fantasy universe he had to create. Later on Muybridge started to experiment with 3D photography having two images side by side to create a 3D effect on the viewers eyes.

Further along his career a WEALTHY MAN by the name of Leland Stanford approached Muybridge asked if he could capture the movement of a horse through photographs to create a sequence of photos in which the horse temporarily leaves the ground to better understands how it moves.

Muybridge attempted this but his first attempts failed and continued work with other projects he was working on in his mobile PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIO “Helios Flying Studio”.

Muybridge later married a 19-year-old woman who was currently married to another man. He paid for her DIVORCE and married her soon after. However all was not well and good in there relationship as his wife was having an affair while Muybridge was away on business.

Muybridge came back and had heard the news he then proceeded to follow and kill the man he successfully did so and was brought to trial four months later but was not convicted.

After the murder of the man and the death of his wife nine months later Muybridge’s mind soon turned into this world of darkness and false reality his photography became more dark and chaotic.

Leland Stanford contacted Muybridge again to get this sequence of photos both obsessed with the possibility of moving pictures Muybridge paid engineers he knew who worked on rail roads to make electronic SHUTTERS for his cameras to capture a 500^th of second for a single movement.

A set up of 24 cameras were used with wires to close the SHUTTERS once the they were trample on by the horse the wires were set up along the track so the horse would capture the wires.

A few attempts of this and the photo of a horse leaving the ground was found sceptical at first by critics Muybridge quickly realised that he could use the sequence of photos as proof to show that the horse does leave the ground.

Using a device called Zoopraxiscope  he was able to show audiences the motion of a horse while turning glass disc in a machine to create an animation. Most of his work was painted onto to make the pictures move better and to make it easier on the viewers eye.

With this new technique of moving pictures he then proceeded to move onto other motion sorts of works. However this work was seen as a dark fantasy into his mind as most of the pictures were of naked models mainly women. People quickly questioned his motives and class him as insane and quite “purvey”.

This was also questioned before in his early career with the lengths he would go to get a shot. People thought of him as old insane man however they also thought of him as a creative man even though he was quite and egotist with his work and was very boastful towards him self.

A lot of his work includes himself naked which notably is some of his best work on record. One effect he has is the ability to freeze water in a shot, which is something that revolutionised how we saw pictures as a whole.

One notable part of his work is that he was able to create a 360 rotation of his whole body, which is used today in modern day cinema today. Matrix uses scenes of 360 slow motion, which create a similar effect. This photography is called Time lapse photography.

He inspired many Etienne-Jules Marey and many others to proceed with this type of photography he amazed the scientific community but not the artistic side as they were very sceptical of his work. Later on Leland Stanford released a book about Muybridges work and claimed it as his own which also gave Muybridge a worse reputation.

Edweard Muybrigde was not the inventor of animation but more a visionary of what it could be He died at 74 years old in the place he was born Kingston England.