Plate Number 133. Descending stairs and throwing handkerchief over shoulders
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 23.2 × 31.1 cm (9 1/8 × 12 1/4 in.) sheet: 47.9 × 60.4 cm (18 7/8 × 23 3/4 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887)
Accession Number
2014.79.182
Art Historical Context
Step into the groundbreaking world of motion photography with *Plate Number 133. Descending stairs throwing handkerchief over shoulders* Eadweard Muy, created in 1887. This collotype print, measuring 23.2 × 31.1 cm, captures a nude female figure in sequential motion—a hallmark of Muybridge's *Animal Locomotion* series Funded partly by Leland Stanford, these 781 plates dissected human and animal movement using multiple cameras triggered in rapid succession, shattering myths about how bodies move and laying the groundwork for cinema. Muybridge's chronophotography technique synchronized up to 24...
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...