Plate Number 4. Walking 1887

This is Plate Number 4. Walking, by Eadweard Muybridge, an albumen silver print made in the late 19th century. Muybridge was commissioned to undertake a study to settle a debate about whether all four of a horse's hooves leave the ground when it gallops. But his work had a broader impact, especially on the representation of the human body. Here, the male figure is captured at sequential intervals, against a gridded backdrop that quantifies his movement. The effect is to render the body as an object of scientific investigation, laying bare the mechanics of human motion, in a way that chimed with the rise of industry. Historians have used Muybridge's motion studies to understand the relationship between art, science, and the changing experience of time and space in the modern era. By examining period documents we can come to see these photographic series as deeply embedded in a specific cultural and institutional context.