Plate Number 133. Descending stairs and throwing handkerchief over shoulders 1887

Eadweard Muybridge's "Plate Number 133. Descending stairs and throwing handkerchief over shoulders" (1887) is a photographic sequence of a woman walking down a set of stairs. The images capture the woman's body in motion, from a side view. This image, and its companion plates, illustrate Muybridge's famous experiments in motion photography, which aimed to capture the precise movements of animals and humans in a way never seen before. The series of images that comprise this work offer a fascinating glimpse into the mechanics of human movement. The photographs were created using a series of cameras triggered by tripwires, which allowed Muybridge to capture multiple frames of the same subject at different stages of motion. As a seminal work in the development of motion pictures, Muybridge's work has had a lasting impact on art, science, and culture.