An example of Muybridge’s motion photography, which showed for the first time how the legs of a horse move.
Eadweard Muybridge, BORN 1830
photographY & CRIME OF PASSION
Eadweard Muybridge (9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first name Eadweard as the original Anglo-Saxon form of Edward, and the surname Muybridge, believing it to be similarly archaic. Born in Kingston upon Thames, at age 20 he emigrated to America as a bookseller, first to New York, and then to San Francisco. Planning a return trip to Europe in 1860, he suffered serious head injuries in a stagecoach crash in Texas. He spent the next few years recuperating in Kingston upon Thames, where he took up professional photography, learning the wet-plate collodion process. In 1868 he exhibited large photographs of Yosemite Valley, which made him world-famous. In 1874 Muybridge shot and killed Major Harry Larkyns, his wife's lover, but was acquitted in a jury trial on the grounds of justifiable homicide.