Left Foot Hop 1884

The legend tells of two rich American stable owners who made a $25,000 bet on whether or not a horse would at some point in a race have all four feet in the air. As proof, they required a chronograph of the movement in a synchronized depiction of the motion sequence, a technique on which Edweard Muybrdige (1830-1904) was working. Muybridge made a name for himself with landscape photographs of the Wild West. Under contract from the American governmenthe ascertained Alaska, the territory newly acquired from Russia for $7.2 million, and created acclaimed pictures of Yosemite National Park. But it was first the chronograph that assured him an irrevocable position in the history of photography.  With first 12, and then later 24 cameras lined up next to each other, which were automatically triggered by strings as they were passed, he froze the movement studies in a row of images.  In 1887, he published his first main work, Animal Locomotion. Muybrdige’s works, as those of his French colleague, Étienne-Jules Marey, belong in the boundaries of film. “In the not too distant future, we will construct instruments that will not only reproduce visible actions at the same time as the spoken word, but will also capture an entire opera with gestures, facial expressions and the songs of the actors as well as the accompanying music.  And all with the help of a machine,” Muybridge phropetically wrote in 1899 in his work, Animals in Motion.  “and that for the education and instruction of a  public, which will come long after the death of the contributors.”