Eadweard Muybridge

I never cease to be fascinated with early photography and the cultural concepts entailed therein. The time and effort required to take a single photograph in the 1800's as opposed to in our time had a clear impact on subject matter and composition. While in the modern era, anyone can take hundreds of photos of his or her cat behaving in an amusing way, the implications of a photo more than a century ago were far graver.
Enter Eadweard Muybridge. It is difficult to determine whether he was a photographer or a cinematographer. Muybridge's photos show sequences of action, which, when chained together show brief scenes, such as the galloping buffalo above. Muybridge's photos were revolutionary, and influenced such artists as Thomas Eakins and was the predicate for the development of the modern video camera. Below is an example of Eakins' photography that shows a strong correlation to Muybridge's experiments. However, while Muybridge used multiple cameras, Eakins accomplished this particular work with multiple exposures on a single negative.