Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge (; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known 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, England, at the age of 20 he emigrated to the United States as a bookseller, first to New York City, and eventually to San Francisco. In 1860, he planned a return trip to Europe, and suffered serious head injuries in a stagecoach crash in Texas en route. He spent the next few years recuperating in Kingston upon Thames, where he took up professional photography, learned the wet-plate collodion process, and secured at least two British patents for his inventions. He returned to San Francisco in 1867, a man with a markedly changed personality. In 1868, he exhibited large photographs of Yosemite Valley, and began selling popular stereographs of his work.

In 1874, Muybridge shot and killed Major Harry Larkyns, his wife's lover, but was acquitted in a controversial jury trial, on the grounds of justifiable homicide. In 1875, he travelled for more than a year in Central America on a photographic expedition.

Today, Muybridge is best known for his pioneering chronophotography of animal locomotion between 1878 and 1886, which used multiple cameras to capture the different positions in a stride, and for his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting painted motion pictures from glass discs that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography. From 1883 to 1886, he entered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, occasionally capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate moments in time.

During his later years, Muybridge gave many public lectures and demonstrations of his photography and early motion picture sequences, travelling frequently in England and Europe to publicise his work in cities such as London and Paris. He also edited and published compilations of his work, some of which are still in print today, which greatly influenced visual artists and the developing fields of scientific and industrial photography. He retired to his native England permanently in 1894. In 1904, the year of his death, the Kingston Museum was opened in his hometown, and it continues to house a substantial collection of his works in a dedicated gallery.

Names

Edward James Muggeridge was born and raised in England. Muggeridge changed his name several times, starting with "Muggridge". From 1855 to 1865, he mainly used the surname "Muygridge".

From 1865 onward, he used the surname "Muybridge".

In addition, he used the pseudonym ''Helios'' (Titan of the sun) for his early photography. He also used this as the name of his studio and gave it to his only son, as a middle name: Florado Helios Muybridge, born in 1874.

While travelling in 1875 on a photography expedition in the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, the photographer advertised his works under the name "Eduardo Santiago Muybridge" in Guatemala.

After an 1882 trip to England, he changed the spelling of his first name to "Eadweard", the Old English form of his name. The spelling was probably derived from the spelling of King Edward's Christian name as shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which had been re-erected in 1850 in Muybridge's hometown, 100 yards from his childhood family home. He used "Eadweard Muybridge" for the rest of his career.

Others frequently misspelled his surname as "Maybridge", "Moybridge", or "Mybridge". His gravestone carries his name as "Eadweard Maybridge".

1830–1850: Early life and family

Edward James Muggeridge was born in Kingston upon Thames, in the county of Surrey in England (now Greater London), on 9 April 1830 to John and Susanna Muggeridge; he had three brothers. His father was a grain and coal merchant, with business spaces on the ground floor of their house adjacent to the River Thames at No. 30 High Street. The family lived in the rooms above. After his father died in 1843, his mother carried on the business.

His younger cousins Norman Selfe (1839–1911) and Maybanke Anderson (née Selfe; 1845–1927), also spent part of their childhood in Kingston upon Thames. They moved to Australia and Norman, following a family tradition, became a renowned engineer, while Maybanke made fame as a suffragette. pp. 24–25

His paternal great-grandparents were Robert Muggeridge and Hannah Charman, who owned a farm. Their oldest son John Muggeridge (1756–1819) was Edward's grandfather; he was a stationer who taught Edward the business. Several uncles and cousins, including Henry Muggeridge (Sheriff of London), were corn merchants in the City of London. All were born in Banstead, Surrey. Edward's younger brother George, born in 1833, lived with their uncle Samuel in 1851, after the death of their father in 1843.

1850–1860: Bookselling in America

At the age of 20, Muybridge decided to seek his fortune. He turned down an offer of money from his grandmother, saying "No, thank you Grandma, I'm going to make a name for myself. If I fail, you will never hear of me again." Muybridge emigrated to the United States, arriving in New York City in 1850. Here, he was possibly a partner in the book business enterprise Muygridge & Bartlett together with a medical student, which existed for about a year. He spent his first years importing and selling books from the UK, and became familiar with early photography through his acquaintance with New York daguerreotypist Silas T. Selleck.

Muybridge arrived in New Orleans in January 1855, and was registered there as a book agent by April.

Muybridge probably arrived in California around the autumn of 1855, when it had not yet been a state for more than five years. He visited the new state capital, Sacramento, as an agent selling illustrated Shakespeare books in April 1856, and soon after settled at 113 Montgomery Street in San Francisco. From this address he sold books and art (mostly prints), in a city that was still the booming "capital of the Gold Rush" in the "Wild West". There were already 40 bookstores and a dozen photography studios in town, and he even shared his address with a photo gallery, right next to another bookstore. He partnered with W.H. Oakes as an engraver and publisher of lithograph prints, and still functioned as a book agent for the London Printing and Publishing Company.

In April 1858, Muybridge moved his store to 163 Clay Street, where his friend Silas Selleck now had a photo gallery. Muygridge was a member of the Mechanic's Institute of the City of San Francisco. In 1859, he was elected as one of the directors for the San Francisco Mercantile Library Association.

Muybridge sold original landscape photography by Carleton Watkins, as well as photographic copies of paintings. It remains uncertain whether or not Muygridge personally made such copies, or familiarized himself with photographic techniques in any fashion before 1860, although Muybridge claimed in 1881 that he "came to California in 1855, and most of the time since and all of the time since 1860 (...) had been diligently, and at the same time studiously, been engaged in photography."

Edward's brother George Muybridge came to San Francisco in 1858 but died of tuberculosis soon after. Their youngest brother Thomas S. Muygridge arrived in 1859, and it soon became clear that Edward planned to stop operating his bookstore business. On 15 May 1860, Edward published a special announcement in the ''Bulletin'' newspaper: "I have this day sold to my brother, Thomas S. Muygridge, my entire stock of Books, Engravings, etc.(...) I shall on 5th June leave for New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, and Vienna, etc." Although he altered his plans, he eventually took a cross-country stagecoach on 2 July to catch a ship in New York.

1860–1866: Serious accident, recuperation, early patents, and short career as venture capitalist

In July 1860, Muybridge suffered a head injury in a violent runaway stagecoach crash at the Texas border, which killed the driver and one passenger, and badly injured every other passenger on board. Muybridge was ejected from the vehicle and hit his head on a rock or other hard object. He woke up in a hospital bed at Fort Smith, Arkansas, with no recollection of the nine days after he had taken supper at a wayside cabin away, not long before the accident. He suffered from a bad headache, double vision, deafness, loss of taste and smell, and confusion. It was later claimed that his hair turned from brown to grey in three days. The problems persisted fully for three months and to a lesser extent for a year.

Arthur P. Shimamura, an experimental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, has speculated that Muybridge suffered substantial injuries to the orbitofrontal cortex that probably also extended into the anterior temporal lobes, which may have led to some of the emotional, eccentric behaviour reported by friends in later years, as well as freeing his creativity from conventional social inhibitions. Today, there is still little effective treatment for this kind of injury.

Muybridge was treated at Fort Smith for three weeks before he went to a doctor in New York City. He fled the noise of the city and stayed in the countryside. He then went back to New York for six weeks and sued the stage company, which earned him a $2,500 compensation. Eventually, he felt well enough to travel to England, where he received medical care from Sir William Gull (who was also personal physician to Queen Victoria), and was prescribed abstinence of meat, alcohol, and coffee for over a year. Gull also recommended rest and outdoor activities, and considering a change in profession.

Muybridge stayed with his mother in Kennington and later with his aunt while in England. Muybridge later stated that he had become a photographer at the suggestion of Gull. However, while outdoors photography might have helped in getting some fresh air, dragging around heavy equipment and working with chemicals in a dark room did not comply with the prescriptions for rest that Gull preferred to offer.

On 28 September 1860, "E. Muggeridge, of New York" applied for British patent no. 2352 for "An improved method of, and apparatus for, plate printing" via London solicitor August Frederick Sheppard.

On 1 August 1861, Muygridge received British patent no. 1914 for "Improvements in machinery or apparatus for washing clothes and other textile articles". On 28 October the French version of this patent was registered. He wrote a letter to his uncle Henry, who had emigrated to Sydney (Australia), with details of the patents and he also mentioned having to visit Europe for business for several months. Muygridge's inventions (or rather: improved machinery) were demonstrated at the 1862 International Exhibition.

Muybridge's activities and whereabouts between 1862 and 1865 are not very well documented. He turned up in Paris in 1862 and again in 1864. In 1865 he was one of the directors for the Austin Consolidated Silver Mines Company (limited) and for The Ottoman Company (limited)/The Bank of Turkey (limited), under his new name "Muybridge". Both enterprises were very short-lived due to the Panic of 1866, and Muybridge chaired the meetings in which the companies were dissolved during the spring of 1866.

Muybridge may have taken up photography sometime between 1861 and 1866. He possibly learned the wet-plate collodion process in England, and was possibly influenced by some of well-known English photographers of those years, such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, and Roger Fenton. However, it remains unclear how much he had already learned before the accident and how much he may have learned after his return to the United States.

1867–1873: Helios, photographer of the American West

Muybridge returned to San Francisco on 13 February 1867 a changed man. Reportedly his hair had turned from black to grey within three days after his 1860 accident. Friends and associates later stated that he had changed from a smart and pleasant businessman into an eccentric artist. He was much more careless about his appearance, was easily agitated, could suddenly take objection to people and soon after act like nothing had happened, and he would regularly misstate previously-arranged business deals. His care about whether he judged something to be beautiful had become much stronger than his care for money; he easily refused payment if a customer seemed to be slightly critical of his work. Photographer Silas Selleck, who had known Muybridge from New York since circa 1852 and had been a close friend since 1855, claimed that he could hardly recognize Muybridge after his return.

Muybridge converted a lightweight two-wheel, one-horse carriage into a portable darkroom to carry out his work, and with a logo on the back dubbed it "Helios' Flying Studio". He had acquired highly proficient technical skills and an artist's eye, and became very successful in photography, focusing principally on landscape and architectural subjects. An 1868 advertisement stated a wide scope of subjects: "Helios is prepared to accept commissions to photograph Private Residences, Ranches, Mills, Views, Animals, Ships, etc., anywhere in the city, or any portion of the Pacific Coast. Architects', Surveyors' and Engineers' Drawings copied mathamatically ( sic) correct. Photographic copies of Paintings and Works of Art."

Muybridge constantly tinkered with his cameras and chemicals, trying to improve the sales appeal of his pictures. In 1869, he patented a "sky shade" to reduce the tendency of intense blue outdoors skies to bleach out the images of the blue-sensitive photographic emulsions of the time. An article published in 2017 and an expanded book document that Muybridge heavily edited and modified his photos, inserting clouds or the moon, even adding volcanos to his pictures for artistic effects.

San Francisco views

Helios produced over 400 different stereograph cards, initially sold through Seleck's Cosmopolitan Gallery at 415 Montgomery Street, and later through other distributors, such as Bradley & Rulofson. Many of these cards showed views of San Francisco and its surroundings. Stereo cards were extremely popular at the time and thus could be sold in large quantities for a very low price, to tourists as a souvenir, or to proud citizens and collectors.

Early in his new career, Muybridge was hired by Robert B. Woodward (1824–1879) to take extensive photos of his Woodward's Gardens, a combination amusement park, zoo, museum, and aquarium that had opened in San Francisco in 1866.

Muybridge took pictures of ruins after the 21 October 1868 Hayward earthquake.

During the construction of the San Francisco Mint in 1870–1872, Muybridge made a series of images of the building's progress, documenting changes over time in a fashion similar to time-lapse photography. These images may have attracted the attention of Leland Stanford, who would later hire Muybridge to develop an unprecedented series of photos spaced in time.

Yosemite

From June to November 1867, Muybridge visited Yosemite Valley He took enormous safety risks to make his photographs, using a heavy view camera and stacks of glass plate negatives. A stereograph he published in 1872 shows him sitting casually on a projecting rock over the Yosemite Valley, with of empty space yawning below him. He returned with numerous stereoscopic views and larger plates. He selected 20 pictures to be retouched and manipulated for a subscription series that he announced in February 1868. Twenty original photographs (possibly the same) were used to illustrate John S. Hittel's guide book ''Yosemite: Its Wonders and Its Beauties'' (1868).

Some of the pictures were taken of the same scenes shot by his contemporary Carleton Watkins. Muybridge's photographs showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West; if human figures were portrayed, they were dwarfed by their surroundings, as in Chinese landscape paintings. In comparing the styles of the two photographers, Watkins has been called "a classicist, making serene, stately pictures of a still, eternal world of beauty", while Muybridge was "a romantic who sought out the uncanny, the unsettling, the uncertain". In the 21st century there have been claims that many landscape photos attributed to Muybridge were actually made by or under the close guidance of Watkins, but these claims are disputed. Regardless, Muybridge started to develop his own leading-edge innovations in photography, especially in the capturing of ever-faster motion.

Government commissions

In 1868, Muybridge was commissioned by the US government to travel to the newly acquired US territory of Alaska to photograph the Tlingit Native Americans, occasional Russian inhabitants, and dramatic landscapes.Paula Fleming and Judith Lusky, ''The North American Indians in Early Photographs'', Dorset Press, 1988, (source: Ralph W. Andrews, 1964 and David Mattison, 1985)

In 1871, the United States Lighthouse Board hired Muybridge to photograph lighthouses of the American West Coast. From March to July, he travelled aboard the Lighthouse Tender ''Shubrick'' to document these structures.

In 1873, Muybridge was commissioned by the US Army to photograph the " Modoc War" dispute with the Native American tribe in northern California and Oregon. A number of these photographs were carefully staged and posed for maximum effect, despite the long exposures required by the slow photographic emulsions of the time.

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