Plate Number 348. Wrestling, Graeco-Roman
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 23.1 × 31.5 cm (9 1/8 × 12 3/8 in.) sheet: 47.7 × 60.3 cm (18 3/4 × 23 3/4 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887)
Accession Number
2014.79.372
Art Historical Context
Eadweard Muybridge’s *Plate Number 348. Wrestling, Graeco-Roman* (1887) belongs to his groundbreaking series *Animal Locomotion*, a systematic study of human and animal movement. Working at the University of Pennsylvania, Muybridge arranged banks of cameras triggered by electromagnetic shutters to freeze rapid action in successive frames. The resulting collotype print records two wrestlers locked in a classic hold, their bodies suspended mid-motion with anatomical precision. Collotype, a fine photomechanical process capable of rendering subtle tonal gradations, allowed these scientific images...
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...