While rightly famous for his work on animal locomotion it is the first group of photographs in this posting that shine most brightly. It is often overlooked how magnificent a photographer Eadweard Muybridge was and what a brilliant eye he had. The top three photographs, especially the first one, are knockouts – radiant jewels in which the tensional points of the composition and the atmosphere of the scene are captured magnificently. I also love the use of human figures to give scale to the scene.
It is rare to find Eadweard Muybridge photographs other than his locomotion studies on the Internet (do a search under Google and see for yourself!), so it is a particular pleasure to post these photographs. It is something I have been wanted to do for quite a while now and finally it has come to pass; earlier iterations of this exhibition had few press images so I must heartily thank the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.
Marcus
 |
| Eadweard Muybridge Ruins of a Church, Antigua, Guatemala1875 albumen print Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal |
 |
Eadweard Muybridge The Ramparts, Funnel Rock, Hole in the Wall, Pyramid, Sugar Loaf, Oil House, and Landing Cove on Fisherman’s Bay, South Farallon Island (4150)1871 albumen print U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office |
 |
Eadweard Muybridge Ruins of the Church of San Domingo, Panama1875 albumen print image courtesy The Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington |
 |
Eadweard Muybridge First-Order Lighthouse at Punta de los Reyes, Seacoast of California, 296 Feet Above Sea (4136)1871 albumen print U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office |
 |
Eadweard Muybridge Pi-Wi-Ack. Valley of the Yosemite. (Shower of Stars) “Vernal Fall.” 400 Feet Fall. No. 291872 albumen print Collection San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; gift of Jeffrey Fraenkel and Frish Brandt |
 |
Eadweard Muybridge Bridge on the Porto Bello, Panama1875 albumen print Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA |
From February 26 through June 7, 2011, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will showcase the first-ever retrospective examining all aspects of artist Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering photography. Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change brings together more than 300 objects created between 1857 and 1893, including Muybridge’s only surviving zoopraxiscope – an apparatus he designed in 1879 to project motion pictures. Originally organized by Philip Brookman, Corcoran Gallery of Art chief curator and head of research, the San Francisco presentation is organized by SFMOMA Associate Curator of Photography Corey Keller.
Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change includes numerous vintage photographs, albums, stereographs, lantern slides, glass negatives and positives, patent models, zoopraxiscope discs, proof prints, notes, books, and other ephemera. The works have been brought together from 38 different collections and include a number of Muybridge’s photographs of Yosemite Valley, including dramatic waterfalls and mountain views from 1867 and 1872; images of Alaska and the Pacific coast; an 1869 survey of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads in California, Nevada, and Utah; pictures from the Modoc War, pictures from Panama and Guatemala; and urban panoramas of San Francisco. The exhibition also includes examples from Muybridge’s experimental series of sequential stop-motion photographs such as Attitudes of Animals in Motion (1881) and his later masterpiece Animal Locomotion (1887).
The exhibition is organized in a series of thematic sections that present the chronology of Muybridge’s career, the evolution of his unique sensibility, the foundations of his experimental approach to photography, and his connections to other people and events that helped guide his work. The sections include: Introduction: The Art of Eadweard Muybridge (1857-1887); The Infinite Landscape: Yosemite Valley and the Western Frontier (1867-1869); From California to the End of the Earth: San Francisco, Alaska, the Railroads, and the Pacific Coast (1868-1872); The Geology of Time: Yosemite and the High Sierra (1872); Stopping Time: California at the Crossroads of Perception (1872-1878); War, Murder, and the Production of Coffee: the Modoc War and the Development of Central America (1873-1875); Urban Panorama (1877-1880); The Horse in Motion (1877-1881); Motion Pictures: the Zoopraxiscope (1879-1893); and Animal Locomotion (1883-1893).
.
Muybridge and San Francisco
Best known for his groundbreaking studies of animals and humans in motion, Muybridge (1830-1904) was also an innovative and successful landscape and survey photographer, documentary artist, inventor, and war correspondent. Born in Kingston upon Thames, England, in 1830, Muybridge immigrated to the United States around 1851. He worked as a bookseller in New York and San Francisco and returned to London in 1860 following a serious injury. Muybridge learned photography in Britain and by 1867 returned to the United States, where began his career as a photographer in San Francisco. He gained recognition through innovative landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the American West. Between 1867 and 1871, these were published under the pseudonym “Helios.”
Muybridge spent most of his career in San Francisco and Philadelphia during a time of rapid industrial and technological growth. In the 1870s he developed new ways to stop motion with his camera. Muybridge’s legendary sequential photographs of running horses helped change how people saw the world. His projected animations inspired the early development of cinema, and his revolutionary techniques produced timeless images that have profoundly influenced generations of photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists.”
Press release from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) website
 |
| Eadweard Muybridge Savings and Loan Society, Clay Street (340)1869 albumen stereograph Collection of Leonard A. Calle |
 |
| Eadweard Muybridge Contemplation Rock, Glacier Point (1385)1872 albumen stereograph Collection of California Historical Society |
 |
| Eadweard Muybridge The Brandenburg Album of Bradley & Rolufson “Celebrities” and Muybridge Photographs, page 1041874 albumen prints Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Museum Purchase Fund, 1972.9.104 |
 |
| Eadweard Muybridge Boxing; open-hand. Plate 3401887 collotype Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. |
 |
| Eadweard Muybridge Horses. Running. Phryne L. Plate 401879 from The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, 1881 albumen print image courtesy The Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon |
 |
| Eadweard Muybridge Studies of Foreshortenings. Horses. Running. Mahomet. Plates 143-1441879 from The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, 1881 albumen print Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA |
 |
| Eadweard Muybridge Leland Stanford, Jr. on his pony “Gypsy” – Phases of a Stride by a Pony While Cantering1879 collodion positive on glass Wilson Centre for Photography |
 |
| Eadweard Muybridge General view of experiment track, background and cameras, Plate F1881 from The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, 1881 albumen print courtesy Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries |
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
151 Third Street (between Mission + Howard)
San Francisco CA 94103
San Francisco CA 94103
Opening hours:
Monday – Tuesday 11:00 a.m. – 5:45 p.m.
Wednesday Closed
Thursday 11:00 a.m. – 8:45 p.m.
Friday – Sunday 11:00 a.m. – 5:45 p.m.
Monday – Tuesday 11:00 a.m. – 5:45 p.m.
Wednesday Closed
Thursday 11:00 a.m. – 8:45 p.m.
Friday – Sunday 11:00 a.m. – 5:45 p.m.
