Exposing Muybridge

Brilliant, ambitious, and mischievous, the 19th-century San Francisco photographer Eadweard Muybridge lived the lives of a dozen men before his breakthrough photographs of running horses set the course for the development of cinema and transformed the camera into a machine of unmatched perception and persuasion. Muybridge’s personal story is as melodramatic as his professional one: distinguished, imbued with ambition and success, loss and betrayal, even the cold-blooded killing of a romantic rival.Not all is what it appears, however, and Muybridge's work harbors secrets that beg the question: Can we believe what we see in a photograph?Far from a relic of the past, then, Muybridge marks a beginning of “now,” his work catalyzing much of our modern culture, inspiring cutting-edge artists, scientists, and innovators, people who continue to reshape how we interpret and experience our world.