Eadweard Muybridge
(Kingston, England, 1830 - 1904, Kingston, England)
British
Muybridge’s interest in the human figure was driven by scientific, rather than aesthetic, concerns. Striving to demystify the dynamics of movement, he developed a technique to photograph each separate component within a motion. This technique, which could be applied to people or animals, involved setting up a series of closely
spaced strings, each attached to the shutter control of a camera. When the subject passed over these strings, each shutter was triggered in rapid succession, thereby capturing every movement. This was later updated to be a series of timed shutters opeining across a row of cameras. His photographs were used by artists as well as scientists to study perception as well as anatomy.