Animal Locomotion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. Commenced 1872 - Completed 1885. Volume XI, Wild Animals and Birds 1880s

Curator: I am immediately struck by a sense of melancholy, perhaps because of the elephant's somber gray tones, the regimented boxes, and how, as a whole, it captures something lost, like trying to bottle up the wind. Editor: You're catching onto the poignancy imbued within Eadweard Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion.” Specifically, this is Volume XI showing Wild Animals and Birds and it culminates a decade-long electro-photographic exploration, completed around 1885. Think about what went into making each of these photograms to get the final image. Curator: The very essence of movement, atomized! I can almost hear the rhythmic thump of those massive feet as the elephant ambles across the frame. It’s more than science; it’s poetry written with light. Editor: Precisely. Muybridge's process was rooted in the tangible. Banks of cameras, trip wires, complex electrical setups - the mechanics of capturing an image in motion meant a revolution in how we conceptualized the ephemeral. He made tangible, something so fleeting to the naked eye, through meticulously designed technology and his business acumen. Curator: I still see a kind of forced march! These poor animals, essentially performers in a bizarre stage production orchestrated for the sake of… science? Curiosity? Art? All three, I suppose, but it has an underlying tension I find almost unsettling. Editor: Perhaps! What I find remarkable is how the artist leveraged technological progress. It wasn’t solely a feat of photography. The book became another technology--a tool for disseminating knowledge and controlling the very distribution of moving images in material form, before film. Curator: The elephant is the perfect subject. Huge, placid, yet brimming with this hidden agility he's revealing! This pre-cinema experiment has such elegance and absurdity all rolled into one frame. Editor: It is a stunning marriage of art and industry. Looking at it through this lens changes our comprehension, beyond simple visual wonder. Thanks to understanding this complex historical process, this piece allows me to see Muybridge less as just an artist, but instead also as someone rooted in labor and capital. Curator: So true. Now I find myself contemplating the real impact of what he sought out. He makes me reflect about motion, animal nature and art as tools to interpret, and give shape to it. Editor: A perfect summary. This is a true monument to the material conditions of both art and science in their emergent forms, even if you find a bit of gray-toned melancholy in it, as well.