Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion, plate 631, depicting the thoroughbred bay horse, Bouquet, c. 1887.
(Image: University of Pennsylvania Archives)
In 1872, Eadweard Muybridge used photography to settle a bet—revealing that, for a brief moment too quick for the human eye, all four legs of a trotting horse leave the ground. A mere 11 years later, he was invited to a meeting with influential Philadelphians at the University of Pennsylvania to discuss plans for a university-sponsored scientific endeavor that would use photography to study animal and human movement.
The result was “Animal Locomotion,” one of the earliest attempts to use photography as a scientific tool. Using his 12-camera setup, Muybridge and his team created more than 100,000 images over three years. They photographed humans performing a wide range of actions, such as pole vaulting, throwing a shotput, wrestling, boxing, and even dumping a bucket of water onto another person, as well as animals from Penn’s Veterinary Hospital and the Philadelphia Zoo walking across an outdoor stage or in their cages.
Muybridge’s approach was not, however, without controversy. Critics questioned whether Muybridge’s multi-camera system truly captured natural motion, and some worried his images were selectively retouched, raising doubts about their scientific reliability.
But today, more than 130 years later, “Animal Locomotion” is celebrated as a pioneering work that transformed photography and the study of movement, laying the foundation for early cinema, sports science, animation, and biomechanics.
Muybridge’s legacy lives on at Penn. Currently, the Muybridge collection at Penn includes 740 of the original 781 plates along with some of his equipment and correspondence. And the work continues in Weitzman’s Thermal Architecture Lab, at Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center, where a state-of-the-art robotic imaging center studies the biomechanics of racehorses, and even in New Mexico, where Penn engineers test robotic systems to pave the way for Moon and Mars exploration.
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