Plate Number 178. Stepping on and over a trestle
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 16.9 × 43.6 cm (6 5/8 × 17 3/16 in.) sheet: 48.3 × 61 cm (19 × 24 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887)
Accession Number
2014.79.223
Art Historical Context
Eadweard Muybridge *Plate Number 178.pping on and over astle* (1887 is a captivating collotype print from his pioneering *Animal Locomotion* series showcasing a nude male figure mid-stride as he navigates a wooden trestle. Muybridge, a British-born photographer working in America, transformed visual arts in the late 19th century by using banks of up to 24 cameras triggered by the subject's movement. This sequential plate freezes an everyday action into precise instants, revealing the fluidity and mechanics of human gait that the naked eye overlooks. Printed via collotype—a meticulous photomec...
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...