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Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement

(Exhibition) Guest Curator, Philip Prodger
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA. January 25, 2004 to February 5—May 11, 2003. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio USA. Nov. 16, 2003 - Jan. 25, 2004.

Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement

By Philip Prodger and Tom Gunning,
Oxford University Press, [publication release scheduled for May 2003]
HB: $35.00, 316 pages, 180 illustrations in black-and-white and color.
ISBN: 0195149645

Reviewed by Amy Ione
PO Box 12748,
Berkley, CA 94712 USA


ione@diatrope.com

In 1872, when Leland Stanford (1824-1893) first approached Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) with a request that he use photography to study the gait of galloping horses, Muybridge declared himself "perfectly amazed at the boldness and originality of the proposition." Ten years of turbulent collaboration ensued. Their relationship ultimately deteriorated as a result of Stanford's publication of a lithographic compendium, The Horse in Motion, which Muybridge claimed did not properly credit him for his contribution to the motion studies. Listed as one of the many technicians involved with the project, the photographer sued his former patron, lost his case in court, severed his ties with Stanford, and launched an independent career in Philadelphia where he worked as a guest of the University of Pennsylvania. Time, in this case, did not stand still. Rather it has worked in Muybridge's favor. Contemporary researchers invariably credit Muybridge with conceiving the first photographs used to freeze rapid action for analysis and study.

The exhibition Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement presents another perspective. Rather than interpreting the Stanford and Muybridge collaboration, guest curator Philip Prodger places their joint legacy within a larger context relying on roughly 170 works, culled from collections in six countries. Juxtaposing pieces from the Cantor Center's extensive Muybridge holdings with projects by his forebearers and contemporaries, the exhibition highlights rare works by Muybridge, captures the stop-action movement that preceded his innovations, and offers insight into the trajectory that led to the invention of cinema as well. Walking through the environment it becomes evident that the deconstruction of movement in time was later re-conceived to portray the movement through time. The cinematic illusion of motion was not time, but a re-creation of the discrete moments that Muybridge and others labored to capture photographically.

Prodger wisely chose to guide the viewer through various stages of motion study topically. The opening sections introduce the diverse methods employed and it is here that we meet the early photographers, an international group. Dazzling, well-preserved pieces by Carleton Watkins (American), Roger Fenton (English), Gustave Le Gray (French), Nadar (also French, pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon), Oscar Gustave Rejlander (Swedish/British) and others of equal reputation illustrate the range of experimentation encouraged by the new technologies. Examples explicitly illustrate that photographers needed to think about (and balance) chemistry, light, environmental conditions, optical quality, focal length, aperture, shutter possibilities, distance and perspective. As a whole, these opening pieces convey the complexity of the tasks necessary for excellence. We perceive that early innovators might employ a clever camera angle to mask blur or resort to outright fakery to achieve goals. Several prints highlight common 'tricks', ranging from composite printing to pose figures so that they appear to capture motion to re-touching (to correct eyes, hands, or blur), and even the wholesale re-drawing of large sections of an image followed by a photograph of the re-drawn image. Multiple examples of certain motifs (e.g., the sea and ice-skating) illuminate how the artistic mind approached solving problems using nineteenth-century technologies. Agitated seas, for example, were fascinating due to the difficulty of accurately photographing turbulent waves, which move quickly. Overcast skies associated with rough weather added to the challenge, for they provided less light. The efforts of these photographers struggling against the physical limitations of cameras and chemistry attests to their abiding interest in deriving solutions that would resolve the multifaceted problems posed by the sea. Ice-skating, too, was a popular subject. In this case the reflective quality of light reduced exposure time. Faced with the array of stimulating material, it is difficult to highlight one or two works of the first photographers. From an historical perspective, George Washington Wilson's 1859 "Loch of Park Aberdeenshire — Sunset" is particularly noteworthy. When it hung in the Octagon at the Royal Photographic Society the plaque described it as "the world's first instantaneous photograph."

A chronophotography section follows Muybridge's California motion studies. On display are seldom-shown works by Thomas Eakins, Etienne-Jules Marey, Ottomar Anschütz, and Albert Londe. All of the works here are exquisite and well-executed. Marey's albumen self-portrait "Self-Portrait Wearing a Turban Made With a Spinning Plate" (c. 1886) was perhaps the most striking to my eye. The final sections turn to Muybridge's later work. Here we are treated to a nearly complete set of the celebrated Animal Locomotion collotypes that Muybridge made at the University of Pennsylvania in 1887, together with hand-annotated proofs and glass plates. Particularly impressive was the one series taken from an oblique angle, a challenge that Muybridge went to great lengths to achieve. It was surprising to see how much more organic and three-dimensional was the impression conveyed by this small change in viewing angle. Ending with the re-construction of Muybridge's zoöpraxiscope, the show conveys that photography might stop time but, nonetheless, it moves on in our imaginations and with the evolution of our tools.

No doubt Time Stands Still will appeal to Leonardo readers with a passion for historical evidence of the art, science, and technology confluence. Within the museum environment, the curator's decisions encouraged the viewer to repeatedly ask how an artist/scientist who employs technology differs from a person who is better defined as an excellent technician. Questions raised by the art and technological devices also repeatedly compel the viewer to wrestle with how combinations of art, science, and technology inform an active, evolving practice. Photographic artifacts, printed materials and devices on display throughout the hall constantly reinforce the questions of this exercise. I found the detail brought the show to life, as did the experience of seeing so many items that have never been exhibited before (or are rarely seen). These include a re-built zoöpraxiscope (Muybridge's first motion-picture projection). Introduced in 1879, the zoöpraxiscope was originally used to demonstrate the correctness of the sequential motion studies, which the machine did by adding motion to the still images. Also on view are Prussian-blue cyanotype proofs made by Muybridge in the 1880s (recently discovered at the Smithsonian Museum). Other items never before seen in the West include the unique photographs and drawings from Eastern European collections. Numerous early photographic projection devices and machines that add to the viewing experience further enhance our engagement with nineteenth century photographic innovation and experimentation. Particularly noteworthy are a multiple lens camera, a Zoetrope, a Phasmatrope, the lantern slides, inter-positives, and Francis Galton's fascinating attempt to incorporate Muybridge's studies into his pseudo-evolutionary theories.

Walking through the installation contemporary projects often came to mind. For example, Digital Muybridge (see http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bregler/bodies.html), as the name suggests, is dedicated to Eadweard Muybridge. This project is about the analysis and synthesis of human motion from video streams (or photo plate sequences as in Muybridge's motion studies). Their studies focus on articulated full body motions and capture videos sequences of people walking, running, dancing, and other body gestures. Impressive websites also animate the sequential stills of the nineteenth-century projects, permitting us to appreciate the studies as stills and to perceive their capacity to convey motion when activated. I was delighted to find Nadar's twelve-frame self-portraits cycling online on the Chronophotographical Projections page (see http://web.inter.nl.net/users/anima). The range of this page is a true aid to chronophotographical study. Included are Muybridge's early experiments with Stanford's horses, content on the zoöpraxiscope, and examples of various photographs included in Times Stands Still. The Chronophotographical Projections site is a must for enthusiasts of this topic who are unable to visit the exhibition.

Although it is conceptually different, the Nadar self-portrait also brought to mind Kiki Smith's circular self-portrait "My Blue Lake" (1995, Photogravure and lithograph). Nadar's work consists of twelve small black-and-white frames that depict him turning around. We can assume he shot the back of his head and shoulders, turned by thirty degrees, and then shot his image again in a sequential series of poses. Since he proceeded sequentially until he returned to his original position we can imagine him producing the work, much as we see it re-created on the Chronophotographical Projections website. Smith's contemporary piece is also of her head and shoulders and similarly suggests a 360 degree image. Her work, however, was actually produced in the round with a camera unknown in Nadar's time, from the conservation department at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Smith's print is then exhibited flat. Thus, rather than the representational series Nadar presents, where time is stopped and we must imagine the sequence moving in space, Smith's rendition resembles some kind of exotic map of 3-dimensional space translated to a flat, 2-dimensional surface.

Those who can't make the Stanford venue might wish to visit the show at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where the material will be up from November 16, 2003 through January 25, 2004. (It seems the planned stop at the Haywood Gallery in London was canceled.) The catalogue, scheduled for publication in May 2003, provides yet another option. Although Phillip Prodger, who is the Associate Curator of Photography at the Saint Louis Art Museum, is the primary author, the book also includes a valuable essay by Thomas Gunning covering cinema's earliest experiments. Gunning, an acknowledged expert on early film from the University of Chicago, analyzes the tradition of identifying Muybridge as the father of the motion picture. In sum, Time Stands Still captures nineteenth-century experimentation with art, science, and technology without overloading the viewer. Impressive and comprehensive, this exhibition introduces rare, extraordinary material to the public and effectively conveys that Muybridge's revolutionary accomplishments were the fulfillment of a goal sought by an international array of innovative photographers.

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Updated 29th March 2003


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