Plate Number 381. Mason, laying a brick
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 19.8 × 37.85 cm (7 13/16 × 14 7/8 in.) sheet: 47.65 × 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
2014.79.400
Art Historical Context
Behold *Plate Number 381. Mason, laying a brick (1887), a captivating collotype print by pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge.ured as part of his groundbreaking *Animal Locomotion* series, this freezes a laborer in mid-motion, meticulously laying a brick in a sequence that reveals the fluid mechanics of everyday work. Muybridge, famed for proving a galloping horse lifts all four hooves off the ground, extended his chronophotographic experiments to human activities, using a battery of up to 24 cameras triggered by the subject to dissect movement into precise instants. The collotype mediu...
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...