Eadweard Muybridge | 1880 | ★★★★
Using 24 cameras spaced 27 inches apart, each triggered by a discrete trip wire, Muybridge’s pre-cinema experiment with moving photography – commissioned by horse-fancying politician Leland Stanford to determine equine running patterns – captures, with almost hypnotic beauty, a few seconds flight of a race horse and its jockey. The result – strangely delightful – was screened at the California School of Fine Arts in 1880, and was, perhaps, the first exhibition of its kind.
