Plate Number 1. Walking

Art Historical Context

Eadweard Muybridge *Plate Number 1 Walking* (1887) captures the groundbreaking moment when photography met motion. Part of his seminal *Animal Locomotion*, this collotype print presents a sequence of 12 images showing a nude male figure striding purposefully across a studio backdrop. Measuring 18.6 × 39.6 cm in its image area, it's a precise slice of Muybridge's exhaustive study of human and animal movement, produced from high-speed photographs taken with his battery of 24 cameras triggered by electro-mechanical shutters. Muybridge, a British-born innovator in the American West, revolutionized visual science after his famous 1870s horse gallop experiments debunked myths about animal gait. By 1887, funded by Leland Stanford and others, he expanded to humans, creating over 780 plates like this one. Collotype, a photomechanical process, allowed faithful reproduction of these sequences, bridging photography and printmaking for scientific and artistic audiences. Acquired by the Corcoran Gallery in 1887 and now in the National Gallery of Art's Corcoran Collection, this plate underscores Muybridge's legacy as a pioneer of chronophotography—essential to early film. It invites us to marvel at everyday motion frozen in time, blending art, science, and the dawn of cinema.

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...