Eadweard Muybridge ( ; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection.
He adopted the first name "Eadweard" as the original Anglo-Saxon form of "Edward", and the surname "Muybridge", believing it to be similarly archaic."If anything, the surname Muggeridge actually derives from a place in Devon, Mogridge, in turn taking its name from one Mogga who held a ridge there. Edward, on the other hand, was indeed spelt Eadweard in Old English." Adrian Room, Naming Names: Stories of Pseudonyms and Name Changes, with a Who's Who, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, p. 125. A photographer in the 19th century American West, he photographed Yosemite, San Francisco, the newly acquired Alaskan Territory, subjects involved in the Modoc War, and lighthouses on the West Coast. He also made his early moving picture studies in California.
Born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, at the age of 20 he emigrated to the United States as a bookseller, first to New York City and then to San Francisco. In 1860, he planned a return trip to Europe, but suffered serious head injuries en route in a stagecoach crash in Texas. He spent the next few years recuperating in Kingston upon Thames, where he took up professional photography, learned the wet-plate collodion process, and secured at least two British patents for his inventions. He returned to San Francisco in 1867, a man with a markedly changed personality. In 1868, he exhibited large photographs of Yosemite Valley, and began selling popular stereographs of his work.
Muybridge is known for his pioneering chronophotography of animal locomotion between 1878 and 1886, which used multiple cameras to capture the different positions in a stride; and for his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting painted motion pictures from glass discs that predated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography. From 1883 to 1886, he entered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, occasionally capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate moments in time.
In his later years, Muybridge gave many public lectures and demonstrations of his photography and early motion picture sequences, travelling frequently in England and Europe to publicise his work in cities such as London and Paris. He also edited and published compilations of his work (some of which are still in print today), which greatly influenced visual artists and the developing fields of scientific and industrial photography. He retired to his native England permanently in 1894. In 1904, the year of his death, the Kingston Museum opened in his hometown, and continues to house a substantial collection of his works in a dedicated gallery.
Names Edward James Muggeridge was born and raised in England. Muggeridge changed his name several times, starting with "Muggridge". From 1855 to 1865, he mainly used the surname "Muygridge".
From 1865 onward, he used the surname "Muybridge".
In addition, he used the pseudonym Helios (Titan of the Sun) for his early photography. He also used this as the name of his studio and gave it to his only son, as a middle name: Florado Helios Muybridge, born in 1874."Exhibition notes", Muybridge Exhibition, at Tate Britain, January 2011.
While travelling in 1875 on a photography expedition in the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, the photographer advertised his works under the name "Eduardo Santiago Muybridge" in Guatemala.
After an 1882 trip to England, he changed the spelling of his first name to "Eadweard", the Old English form of his name. The spelling was probably derived from the spelling of King Edward's Christian name as shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which had been re-erected in 1850 in Muybridge's hometown, 100 yards from his childhood family home. He used "Eadweard Muybridge" for the rest of his career.Paul Hill Eadweard Muybridge Phaidon, 2001
Others frequently misspelled his surname as "Maybridge", "Moybridge", or "Mybridge". His gravestone carries his name as "Eadweard Maybridge".
1830–1850: Early life and family
Edward James Muggeridge was born in Kingston upon Thames, in the county of Surrey in England (now Greater London), on 9 April 1830 to John and Susanna Muggeridge; he had three brothers. His father was a grain and coal merchant, with business spaces on the ground floor of their house adjacent to the River Thames at No. 30 High Street. The family lived in the rooms above.The building today bears a commemorative plaque marking it as Muybridge's childhood home. After his father died in 1843, his mother carried on the business.
His younger cousins Norman Selfe (1839–1911) and Maybanke Anderson (née Selfe; 1845–1927), also spent part of their childhood in Kingston upon Thames. They moved to Australia and Norman, following a family tradition, became a renowned engineer while Maybanke made fame as a suffragette. pp. 24–25
His paternal great-grandparents were Robert Muggeridge and Hannah Charman, who owned a farm. Their oldest son John Muggeridge (1756–1819) was Edward's grandfather; he was a stationer who taught Edward the business. Several uncles and cousins, including Henry Muggeridge (Sheriff of London), were corn merchants in the City of London. All were born in Banstead, Surrey. Edward's younger brother George, born in 1833, lived with their uncle Samuel in 1851, after the death of their father in 1843.
1850–1860: Bookselling in America At the age of 20, Muybridge decided to seek his fortune. He turned down an offer of money from his grandmother, saying "No, thank you Grandma, I'm going to make a name for myself. If I fail, you will never hear of me again." Muybridge immigrated to the United States, arriving in New York City in 1852. Here, he was possibly a partner in the book business enterprise Muygridge & Bartlett together with a medical student, which existed for about a year. He spent his first years importing and selling books from the UK, and became familiar with early photography through his acquaintance with New York daguerreotypist Silas T. Selleck.
Muybridge arrived in New Orleans in January 1855, and was registered there as a book agent by April.
Muybridge probably arrived in California around the autumn of 1855, when it had been a state for barely more than five years. He visited the new state capital, Sacramento, as an agent selling illustrated Shakespeare books in April 1856, and soon after settled at 113 Montgomery Street in San Francisco. From this address he sold books and art (mostly prints), in a city that was still the booming "capital of the Gold Rush" in the "Wild West". There were already 40 bookstores and a dozen photography studios in town, and he even shared his address with a photo gallery, right next to another bookstore. He partnered with W.H. Oakes as an engraver and publisher of lithograph prints, and still functioned as a book agent for the London Printing and Publishing Company.
In April 1858, Muybridge moved his store to 163 Clay Street, where his friend Silas Selleck now had a photo gallery. Muybridge was a member of the Mechanic's Institute of the City of San Francisco. In 1859, he was elected as one of the directors for the San Francisco Mercantile Library Association.
Muybridge sold original landscape photography by Carleton Watkins, as well as photographic copies of paintings. It remains uncertain whether or not Muygridge personally made such copies, or familiarized himself with photographic techniques in any fashion before 1860, although Muybridge claimed in 1881 that he "came to California in 1855, and most of the time since and all of the time since 1860 (...) had been diligently, and at the same time studiously, been engaged in photography".
Edward's brother George Muybridge came to San Francisco in 1858 but died of tuberculosis soon after. Their youngest brother Thomas S. Muygridge arrived in 1859, and it soon became clear that Edward planned to stop operating his bookstore business. On 15 May 1860, Edward published a special announcement in the Bulletin newspaper: "I have this day sold to my brother, Thomas S. Muygridge, my entire stock of Books, Engravings, etc. (...) I shall on 5th June leave for New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, and Vienna, etc." Although he altered his plans, he eventually took a cross-country stagecoach on 2 July to catch a ship in New York.
1860–1866: Serious accident, recuperation, early patents, and short career as venture capitalist In July 1860, Muybridge suffered a head injury in a violent runaway stagecoach crash at the Texas border, which killed the driver and one passenger, and badly injured all other passengers. Muybridge was ejected from the vehicle and hit his head on a rock or another hard object. He woke up in a hospital bed at Fort Smith, Arkansas, with no recollection of the nine days after he had taken supper at a wayside cabin away, not long before the accident. He suffered from a bad headache, double vision, deafness, loss of taste and smell, and confusion. It was later claimed that his hair turned from black to grey in three days. The problems persisted fully for three months and to a lesser extent for a year.
Arthur P. Shimamura, an experimental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, has speculated that Muybridge suffered substantial injuries to the orbitofrontal cortex that probably also extended into the anterior temporal lobes, which may have led to some of the emotional, eccentric behaviour reported by friends in later years, as well as freeing his creativity from conventional social inhibitions. Today, there is still little effective treatment for this kind of injury.
Muybridge was treated at Fort Smith for three weeks before he went to a doctor in New York City. He fled the noise of the city and stayed in the countryside. He then went back to New York for six weeks and sued the stage company, which earned him a $2,500 compensation. Eventually, he felt well enough to travel to England, where he received medical care from Sir William Gull (who would become Physician-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria), and was prescribed abstinence of meat, alcohol, and coffee for over a year. Gull also recommended rest and outdoor activities, and considering a change in profession.
Muybridge stayed with his mother in Kennington and later with his aunt while in England. Muybridge later stated that he had become a photographer at the suggestion of Gull. However, while outdoors photography might have helped in getting some fresh air, dragging around heavy equipment and working with chemicals in a dark room did not comply with Gull's prescriptions for rest.
On 28 September 1860, "E. Muggeridge, of New York" applied for British patent no. 2352 for "An improved method of, and apparatus for, plate printing" via London solicitor August Frederick Sheppard.
On 1 August 1861, Muybridge received British patent no. 1914 for "Improvements in machinery or apparatus for washing clothes and other textile articles". On 28 October, the French version of this patent was registered. He wrote a letter to his uncle Henry, who had immigrated to Sydney (Australia), with details of the patents and mentioned having to visit Europe for business for several months. Muybridge's inventions (or rather improved machinery) were demonstrated at the 1862 International Exhibition.