Machinery for Pulping Coffee--Las Nubes
1875, published 1877
Medium
Photography-Photoprint
Classification
Photography-Photoprint
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mitchell and Nancy Steir
Accession Number
2004.29.4
Tags
Art Historical Context
In 1875, pioneering photographer Eadweardbridge ventured to Central America, capturing the industrial heartbeat of coffee production in images like *Machinery for Pulping Coffee— Nubes*. This photoprint depicts the hulking machinery used to process coffee beans at the Las Nubes plantation, likely in Costa Rica or Guatemala, where workers removed the outer pulp to reveal the valuable inner seed. Published in 187, it showcases Muybridge's documentary precision during a time when coffee fueled global trade and colonial economies. Muybridge, best known for his groundbreaking motion studies later ...
About the Artist
Eadweard Muybridge · 1830–1904
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was an English-American photographer who revolutionized the understanding of motion through his pioneering chronophotographic studies. Born Edward James Muggeridge in Kingston upon Thames, England, he emigrated to America and became famous first for his dramatic landscape photographs of Yosemite Valley, then for his groundbreaking motion studies that proved horses li...