Eadweard Muybridge

Each of these photographs of a child in motion was taken by a different camera positioned at a different point along a track; as the child ran along the track, their footsteps triggered the camera shutters, capturing the figure at specific moments along the journey. 

Photographer Eadweard Muybridge devised this method for his scientific study of humans and animals in motion, published in 1887 as Animal Locomotion. To produce the prints for this publication, Muybridge arranged the photographs into tidy grids that were then rephotographed and printed using the collotype process. 

This photograph is the product of one of Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering experiments in the photographic study of the movement of human and animal bodies. Using a high-speed shutter and electromagnetic triggers, Muybridge recorded a variety of everyday acts, each presented through a set of adjacent and sequential images. For athletic activities, he used almost exclusively male students from the University of Pennsylvania as models. For domestic scenarios, such as

this presentation of a female toddler running, his models were local Philadelphia women and children. The scientific character of his project and its sponsorship by the university’s Veterinary School buffered it from the criticism and censure that other photographs of nude bodies received during that period. Artists and animators later used these images as models for their own work.