Book Description

Volume 3 of three-volume set includes studies of horses, domestic and wild animals, and birds in remarkable stopped-action photographs by pioneering master photographer. Also includes the original prospectus and a catalogue of plates for the entire work. Essential for artists, animators, photographers, cinematographers, anyone interested in the mechanics of people in motion.
... Read more

Book Description

Definitive selection of 3,919 photographs, plus author’s observations on animals’ movements. Incredible true-action shots cover 34 different animals and birds in 132 characteristic motions. Horses, goats, cats, gnus, eagles, gazelles, sloths, camels, many others shown walking, running, flying, leaping, more.
... Read more

Reviews (2)

Its Not Just For Animators
The images of the dray horses pulling heavy loads is worth the price of admission for me. This is a great reference for artists who want to create realistic images of animals in motion. It's a fabulous settler of bar room bets. It's a source of animated gifs for web designers (I have the running cat image that's been going around.)

For people who want to understand animals in general, this is a good reference. I never thought that all the ways an animal can go from point A to point B each had a name to it and that a quadruped can have so many ways to move.

Its an interesting historical piece, too. People do not see horses doing useful work any more and it's a reminder that we all had a life before internal combustion. Its an interesting chapter in the history of photography and the history of art, too. (Painting was never the same after people figured out how animals really moved.)

Indispensible Reference for Artists
Muybridges momumental work photographing animals in all different gates and poses and tests of ability. Using sometimes up to 100 cameras for a single set up to gain what is now the definitive guide for animators in understanding the motion of animals. It all started with a $25,000 bet: Eadweard Muybridge and a friend argued whether all four of the horses hooves leave the ground completely at any point during a gallop. Being funded for the project, Muybridge proved to be the winner in saying that horses do in fact leave the ground for a momentary second in their strides. The book begins with an anlaysis of locomotion, going over the walk, the amble, the trot, the rack (or pace), the canter, the transverse-gallop, the rotary-gallop, and the richochet, along with the leap and buck and kick. There are roughly 4,000 photos in this collection which claims to be the largest collection of animals in motion. It features not only horses but lions, deers, oxen, elephants, birds and kangaroos. From this development, Muybridge not only discovered that horses gallop with no feet touching the ground, but his discovery led to motion pictures, in which his photos is a very crude version of cinema today. Later he designed a viewer called a Zoogyroscope (or Zoopraxiscope) which, similar to a Zoetrope, was a carousel with slits which you look through while it is spinning to give the illusion of motion (or persistence of vision). Today these pictures are looked at for a couple of reasons, mostly as nastolgia for one to have wonder and excitement of this simple cinema, but it also is a great reference for modern animators. In fact, for those looking at animation, I can tell you that if you ask for an application to Walt Disney Animation Studios, they will give you their requirements and texts, this will be on the list. Highly reccomended for the artist, graphic, fine arts or animation or anything else you can dream of. ... Read more

Book Description

The 4,789 photographs in this definitive selection show the human figure—models almost all undraped—engaged in over 160 different types of action: running, climbing stairs, tumbling, dressing, undressing, hopping on one foot, dancing, etc. Children walking, crawling and many dozens of other activities.
... Read more

Reviews (7)

Muybridge's landmark photographic studies of human motion
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was the most significant contributor to the early study of human and animal locomotion, whose extensive studies were acknowledged by such pioneers of motion pictures as the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison. If you have ever seen slow-motion photography of a horse galloping and seen how they have all four hooves off the ground at the same time, then you can understand the fascination in the early days of photography of taking a series of pictures of people running, climbing stairs, or dancing. In fact, it was the horse that got Muybridge involved in this work. In 1872 Muybridge was enlisted to settle bet regarding the position of a trotting horse's legs. But using a camera with the fastest shutter speed available only provided a faint image. Five years later Muybridge used a battery of cameras with mechanically tripped shutters to show the what really happens (in fact, a trotting horse and a galloping horse move differently in having all four hooves off the ground simultaneously).

Consequently, Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope, a primitive motion-picture machine, which recreated movement by displaying individual photographs in rapid succession. "The Human Figure in Motion" was first published in 1901 and reflects the work Muybridge did at the University of Pennsylvania, where he had been invited to work at the behest of the painting Thomas Eakins, who painted motion subjects, which explains why art students are even more interested in this book than scientists. Includes are over 160 motion studies of the human figure engaged in everything from dressing to hopping on one foot. There are almost 5,000 photographs in this 390 page clothbound edition. Be warned that most of the models, both adults and children, are "undraped" to use the vernacular of the time. In 1887 Muybridges's most important work, "Animal Locomotion," was published in 11 volumes containing over 100,000 photographs taken between 1872 and 1885. Obviously, "The Human Figure in Motion" is a more accessible way to appreciate Muybridge's groundbreaking work.

don't trust whitey
This book is great if you don't plan on drawing from it. although the pictures are nice ,contrasty black and whites they are small and repetitive. But what do I know? alot of obscure movie quotes.

Classic artist resource REQUIRED for any who draws people
This is a classic artist's resource that belongs on the shelf of anyone who draws people, at all. This book is filled with thousands of pictures of people doing many, many diverse activities. All of the pictures are of nude people, so as to allow the muscles to be seen clearly. This makes these 19th century photos timeless.

Never has anyone produced such a comprehensive reference of this sort, before, or since. He also produced classic works on the motion of animals, that you have probably seen before, whether you were aware that they were his works or not. Muybridge is a man for the ages. Hopefully, he will one day recieve the recognition that he deserves for his great contributions.

Great Tool
This book is by far the most useful reference books for cartooning anatomy that I have found. also, much cheaper than buying it at a book store.

Good Content, Plain and Simple
Muybridge created an extremely comprehensive collection of photos of people engaged in normal activities. For example, he had men shouldering rifles, women walking up stairs, men playing baseball, a little kid crawling, people with disabilities walking, people carrying objects and so on. Not only were the collections in the form of sequences of shots showing the movement, but they were done from several angles at the same time, so you could see the activity (throwing a bucket of water) front, back and sideways.

Some folks I knew at Autodesk scanned these images into their computers to test early versions of their Animator products. Others have made animated gifs out of Muybridge photos for their web pages. Others just sit and look at them because it's so interesting to see the care in these shots (not to mention all those charming Victorian hairdos :-)). My only (and this is only) beef with it is the images are quite small.

It, and the companion book about animals are very useful and enjoyable, indeed, and there isn't a lot of chatter. ... Read more

Book Description

The world as we know it today began in California in the late 1800s, and Eadweard Muybridge had a lot to do with it. This striking assertion is at the heart of Rebecca Solnit’s new book, which weaves together biography, history, and fascinating insights into art and technology to create a boldly original portrait of America on the threshold of modernity. The story of Muybridge—who in 1872 succeeded in capturing high-speed motion photographically—becomes a lens for a larger story about the acceleration and industrialization of everyday life. Solnit shows how the peculiar freedoms and opportunities of post–Civil War California led directly to the two industries—Hollywood and Silicon Valley—that have most powerfully defined contemporary society. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

More than just the photos
Like many people, I had seen Muybridge's motion studies before, but had never considered the man behind the pictures. Solnit presents a compelling portrait of a man who is at the same time probably certifiably nuts, a genius years ahead of his time, a lousy husband and father, and a murderer. As Solnit points out, his groundbreaking work was really the basis for motion pictures and much of other technology we take for granted today.

I took this book with me on an overnight flight to Brazil and compulsively read it cover to cover while I should have been sleeping.

Much more than Muybridge
I wasn't especially interested in Muybridge, but this book is a good deal more than that. Though not stinting on detail, Solnit's writing and intellectual abilities provide a grasp of the transformations of time and space that occurred in the past century and a half; she addresses, and conquers, the challenges of making another age vivid and profound as has no book I've yet encountered. "She writes like an angel," one critic said, and it's quite true; through her supple and sensitive prose she reflects on Muybridge's life and times, examining them from every angle, and in so doing gives a clinic in how history of any kind may be most richly approached.

Annihilation of time and other concepts
Rebecca Solnit has created a provocative masterpiece! This is not a simple biography about one of the great innovators of the field of photography. It is a richly, intellectually layered work that explores the big ideas of time and our relationship to it; the fusion of politics, science and industry in the 19th century; and links today's Silicon West to what we call the Wild West of our past. She possesses exceptional writing skills. This is book well worth reading by those seeking inspiration to invent the future, or for those who wish insight into the concept of progress.

The Father of the Moving Image
Everyone knows about the inventions of such men as Edison and Marconi, the sorts of inventions that truly brought us to the modern age. It sounds like a stretch to claim that the man who definitively answered the question of whether a trotting horse ever completely leaves the ground also changed the world. However, Rebecca Solnit has written an original biography of the photographer Eadweard Muybridge, _River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West_ (Viking) which centers on how Muybridge, by splitting motion into split-second bits, changed the nature of our perception of time and space in a way that brought us inevitably to Hollywood and to Silicon Valley. She writes, "Muybridge was a doorway, a pivot between that old world and ours, and to follow him is to follow the choices that got us here." As biography, the book is inevitably thin. Muybridge kept no journals and there are few letters, and details about his remarkable life are hard to come by; the basics, of course, are here. Solnit says, "Most of what is known about Muybridge makes him seem a hollow conduit for his work, with only a few vain remarks to personalize the prodigal accomplishments." Rather than biography, as a series of essays on the importance of his work, the book is original and fun.

Muybridge's life and work are inextricably bound with the brand-new state of California, but he was born in 1830 over a family shop in England, in Kingston-upon-Thames. He lit out for San Francisco, where he worked as a bookseller. He made a name for himself in photography, however, which was a relatively new and demanding art. He was among the first to photograph the wilderness of Yosemite, using huge plates for images that are still dramatic. Muybridge stepped into fame with a commission from Leland Stanford, one of the famous robber barons who had made his fortune on the railways. Stanford had a hobby of raising race horses and he wanted to do it all as scientifically as possible. Some horsemen maintained that trotting horses always had at least one foot on the ground, while Stanford maintained that the horse became airborne in each stride; neither side had any way to demonstrate its position, for although one could stare at trotting horses eternally, the motion was simply too fast to make out. There is a legend that Stanford had a big bet on the issue, but Stanford was not a betting man, only one who wanted to raise and race horses scientifically. Muybridge had already had a commission to photograph Stanford's house and properties, and was asked to consider the problem of the trotting horse. Muybridge was instrumental in technological breakthroughs to make the famous series of photos happen, involving film and shutter speed, as well as the development of a way to trigger a set of cameras at just the right time. Solving the technology was only a minor part of his contribution; he went on to run the photographs together so that they became a loop of action, the forebear of the movies. Muybridge's work was so startling that it was denounced .... and cartoon parodies were printed showing a horse's legs in "authentic" wildly impossible positions. His subsequent studies of other animals and humans in motion are still in print, still a vital resource for artists.

Solnit has used the life of Muybridge to gather information on widely dispersed subjects that she ties into the biography with wonderful facility. Wyatt Earp, Mary Pickford, and Thomas Edison are all here. There are digressions about the invention of the time zones, the resettlement and slaughter of the Indians, Hewlitt-Packard, and much more. Solnit's wide-ranging account makes it feasible that Muybridge was the father of the moving image, and that from his work descends the age of images in film, television, and internet. ... Read more

Book Description

Eadweard Muybridge, one of the great pioneer-innovators of the 19th century, is a familiar figure to students of art history, photography, and cinema. Best known for the photographs of horses and other animals in motion that he made in the 1870s and '80s, Muybridge was the first person to use photography to freeze rapid action for analysis and study. He devised a method for photographing episodes of behavior using a series of cameras, producing some of the most famous sequential photographs ever made. These pictures, the first successful photographs of rapidly moving subjects, revolutionized expectations of what photography could reveal about the natural world, and ultimately led to the invention of the motion picture in the mid-1890s.Time Stands Still is the catalogue that accompanies a major exhibition celebrating Muybridge's fascinating work. Though the instantaneous photography movement stands as a crucial event in the progression of photography to motion pictures, this exhibition represents the first major organized treatment of the subject. Opening in spring 2003 at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University and touring through 2004, it combines an examination of the artist's career in motion photography with a survey of early attempts to photograph moving subjects. Guest curator Phillip Prodger is the primary author of the catalogue, but the book also includes a valuable essay covering cinema's earliest experiments by Tom Gunning, an acknowledged expert on early film from the University of Chicago. The exhibition will display Muybridge's zoopraxiscope and other equipment, drawings, ephemera, and photographs made from the invention of photography in the 1830s to the end of Muybridge's career, which culminated with the publication of his encyclopedic work, Animal Locomotion, in 1887. The photographs and objects are drawn largely from the collection of the Cantor Center and are supplemented with a selection of stop-action photographs from other private and public collections. Among those represented will be the work of Talbot, Rejlander, Maray, Eakins, Edison, the Lumiere Freres, and others. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An explosive and innovative photographic history
I have been drawn to the photographs of Eadweard Muybride since childhood -- the jumping horses, running goats etc. have always fascinated me -- but here the author does much better than simply repeat these incredible photographs. He tells you what happened before Muybridge came on the scene; the incredible struggles and sneaky tricks used to make pictures that looked like motion frozen in time. The book is very easy to read - serious, but written in a breezy style that is very accessible. I would recommend this for any history of photography or cinema student. It goes into depth about things that have really never been studied before. Very provocative, highly educational, and very entertaining. ... Read more

Book Description

of the best, most representative sequences from original 5,000 prints. Taken at speeds up to 1/6000th of a second, incredibly precise images show undraped male and female subjects against a ruled background, running, walking, leaping, twisting, throwing, many other activities. Views from front, rear and three-quarter angle.
... Read more

Reviews (2)

Great, but a tip...
Its all covered in "The Human Figure in Motion". If you want Muybridge, may as well get a more comprehensive volume, eh?

one of the great wonders of photography
Muybridge's seemingly artless photography sequences are one of the great wonders of photography, fascinating & humorous. How else could one react to a series of photos showing a nude woman stepping on to a chair to pour cold water on to another? Or to two young men playing leap frog?

Here are rather average bodies - by contemporary standards - throwing baseballs, kneeling & turning, heaving rocks, crawling, descending stairs, walking, running, carrying buckets, attempting a somersault while a pigeon crosses the path. The backgrounds of graphs & lines not only provide the artist's units of measurement, but establish a visual continuity more modern than he could have known.

The Male and Female Figure in Motion is a classic collection, beautifully produced & inexpensively priced. Great for artists & lovers of photography, this volume is part of Dover Publication's Pictorial Archive series, which means you are free to use them in your arts & crafts or post them on web pages. Dover also offers a companion collection of Muybridge's important animal locomotion photographs.

Bob Rixon ... Read more

Book Description

Best, most representative sequences have been specially selected from the monumental original and are presented here in crisp, double-page plates printed on high-quality stock. Horses hauling, walking, trotting, etc., plus sequences of donkeys, an ox, pig, dog, cat, deer and other animals capture details of anatomy and movement with astonishing clarity.
... Read more

Reviews (2)

Too bad was only 95 pages!
I should have got Animals in Motion that is over 400 pages, though this book was just fine, it was, I presume, the appetizer for his other book which had four times as many illustrations for only a few dollars more. Perhaps I'll sell this one and buy the other one and see for sure. Otherwise, its a great book. It had about 13 pages just horses, then went to a donkey and cats, lions, camels and other stuff I didn't need nor was interested in. I wonder if the other book has MORE horses? There was an introduction of one page, a short summary, and the rest was whole pages filled with movie clip style shots that were about 2" SQUARE each frame, maybe 8 - 12 frames per page, each page one animal in motion. I need to see more, more and more of everything, but that's because I'm drawing horses and wanted to see 30 movement shots of one animal instead of 8. The more I have to choose from the better, so guess I'm gonna use the images here until I need to move up to the next Muybridge book, the 418 page one, Animals in motion which I now realize I should have got in the first place.

This book is great for 3d Animators
For those of you who are 3d animators this book is great, it really helps to know how to truly make lifelike those horses or other animals that are more complex then bipeds. I recommend this book to all.

davesheri@hotmail.com ... Read more

Book Description

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is an important name in early photographic history. His pioneering locomotion studies of the 1870s and 1880s, which produced over 20,000 photographs, radically changed the way in which people understood animal and human movement. Less well known is his landscape work, a selection of which is presented in this book.

Other artists in this series include: Eugene Atget, Mathew Brady, Wynn Bullock, Julia Margaret Cameron, Joan Fontcuberta, David Goldblatt, Nan Goldin, Graciela Iturbide, Andre Kertesz, Dorothea Lange, Mary Ellen Mark, Joel Meyerowitz, Boris Mikhailov, Lisette Model, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Eugene Richards, W. Eugene Smith, Shomei Tomatsu, Joel-Peter Witkin ... Read more

Book Description

"Of all the great pioneer-innovators of the 19th century, perhaps the least known is Eadweard Muybridge."

"Of all the great turning points in scientific, technological and artistic thought, undoubtedly the least known (because it has effectively, never been published) is Muybridge's eleven-volume pictorial treatise of human and animal life in motion."

"100 years after completion, this rarest of all photographic series (only 37 sets still extant, most of them incomplete) is finally published complete and accessible to a wide public, in three volumes of 20,000 photographs.Twenty years of devotion and invention, patience and insight, plus $50,000 and 100,000 negatives, culminated in the quintessential study of the moving figure.Muybridge had created an encylopedic anatomy of motion, unique in its day and unsurpassed in ours."

"The photographs consist of a series of movements shown in stop-motion sequence: 781 plates (each plate is a two-page spread) of nearly 300 separate actions split into as many as 50 individual shots per action. 532 of the plates show clothed and unclothed men, women and children engaging in a wide variety of typical actions and activities." ... Read more

Reviews (2)

fantastic book, but no animals...
if you are interested in clear depictions of humans in motion,
it is interesting that the absolute best work on the subject comes from the late 1800s. If you are interested in animal locomotion, get another book. I am assuming that the other 2 volumes will someday become available, making this a true "complete" study.
perhaps someone will update Muybridges work in the interim.

Motion Broken Down
As an artist and beginning animator, I have found Muybridge's motion studies to be helpful in understanding how the body travels in time (animals and machines too) using time-lapse photography. This book remains current and comprehensive especially in light of the current digital revolution's emphasis on special effects and eye candy. Muybridge's work is important because it goes to the roots of motion and reveals its simplicity and beauty. I highly recommend this fascinating book for those with curious minds. ... Read more

Book Description

Time/Motion brings together the work of three photographers-Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton and Jonathan Shaw-whose work demonstrates the extraordinary potential of the photographic image to explore and capture movement and the passage of time. Spanning 130 years from 1872 to the present day, all three developed technological solutions to explore concepts of time and movement, using specialized cameras and photographic processes.

Book Description

With essays by David Harris and Eric Sandweiss. Preface by Phyllis Lambert.

These photographs from the CCA collection and other private and public collections document one of the supreme technical and conceptual achievements in the history of architectural photography.

On July 14, 1877, Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) announced in the San Francisco Chronicle the publication of a set of photographs, Panorama of San Francisco from California Street Hill. It was available in two formats: as a set of albumen prints mounted on cabinet cards, and as an album of 11 albumen prints. Approximately one year later, Muybridge rephotographed the view, this time using a mammothplate camera. The result, a breathtaking 360-degree panorama measuring more than 17 feet in length, was published as an album, comprising 13 albumen prints.

This book documents Muybridge's panoramas of a now-vanished San Francisco, and also discusses the antecedents of his work, thereby placing it within its historical context. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

I want another copy
For anyone who has been in San Francisco this is a terrific book, I want another copy so that I can display both at the same time, I bought the book back in 1990 at an art museum (who only had one copy). Only now do I have the 11 feet of wall space needed to display both, of course it's out of print, but I want another copy! ... Read more