Plate Number 523. A: Striking a blow. B, E: Throwing a disk. C, F: Heaving a 75-lb. stone. D: Throwing a ball
Medium
collotype
Dimensions
image: 32.9 × 24.9 cm (12 15/16 × 9 13/16 in.) sheet: 48.26 × 60.96 cm (19 × 24 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887)
Accession Number
2015.19.4125
Art Historical Context
Eadweard Muybridge’s Plate Number 523 captures the dynamic sequence of human athletic motion through a grid of precisely timed photographs. Created in 1887 as part of his landmark publication *Animal Locomotion*, plate shows six male figures performing actions such as striking a blow, throwing a discus, heaving a heavy stone, and tossing a ball. Muybridge, a pioneering photographer known for his scientific approach to movement, used multiple cameras triggered in rapid succession to freeze motion that the naked eye could not perceive. Printed as a collotype—a high-quality photographic process ...
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...