Plate Number 171. Stepping up on a trestle, jumping down and turning 1887

Editor: This is Plate Number 171. Stepping up on a trestle, jumping down and turning, an 1887 gelatin silver print by Eadweard Muybridge. It feels like a scientific study, but also has an undeniably voyeuristic quality. What historical factors influenced this representation of the female body in motion? Curator: This work sits at the intersection of Victorian scientific inquiry, burgeoning photographic technology, and complex social attitudes toward the female body. Muybridge was contracted to study human locomotion at a time when anxieties around industrialization, evolution, and gender roles were pervasive. How do you think these anxieties manifested in his work? Editor: Maybe in the fragmented way the body is shown – almost dissected into segments of movement? It feels dehumanizing. Curator: Precisely. While ostensibly scientific, consider who gets to be the objective observer and who is subjected to that gaze. The subject's nakedness and the clinical grid invite viewers, primarily a male audience at the time, to analyze and categorize the female form. Moreover, how might class play a role? Do you think the subject had agency in this depiction? Editor: Probably not much. It’s uncomfortable to think of this being presented as objective truth when it was clearly shaped by the cultural biases of the era. I hadn't considered the implications of the grid format as enforcing a kind of control. Curator: Exactly. And by dissecting movement this way, he wasn’t simply recording it, but, also participating in a form of control, reducing it to constituent parts. Think of Michel Foucault’s theories on power and surveillance – how bodies are disciplined through observation and normalization. Editor: That makes me see it in a completely new light. Curator: And hopefully consider the legacy of such images in shaping how we view bodies today.