Time stands still

by Phillip Prodger

"Eadweard Muybridge, famous for the photographs of horses and other animals in motion that he made in the 1870s and '80s, is a familiar figure to students of art history, photography, and cinema. By devising a method for photographing episodes of behavior using a series of cameras, he became the first photographer to successfully capture rapid action for analysis and study. Muybridge's pictures revolutionized expectations of what photography could reveal about the natural world, and were essential to the invention of the motion picture." "This volume is the catalogue for a major exhibition celebrating Muybridge's work, which opens in spring 2003 at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. The first large-scale organized treatment of the instantaneous photography movement, the exhibit - and the catalogue - combine an examination of Muybridge's career with a survey of early attempts to photograph moving subjects." "The photographs and objects featured