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the 1860s, Eadweard Muybridge, born Edward James Muggeridge in Kingston-upon-Thames,
England, had reinvented himself as Helios, one of San Franciscos
most important landscape photographers. His fame brought him to the attention
of Leland Stanford, former governor of California, who hired Muybridge
to get a picture that would settle a hotly debated issue: Is there a moment
in a horses gait when all four hooves are off the ground at once?
Muybridge took up the challenge in 1872. In 1878, he succeeded in taking
a sequence of photographs with 12 cameras that captured the moment when
the animals hooves were tucked under its belly. Publication of these
photographs made Muybridge an international celebrity.
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Portrait of Eadweard Muybridge, about 1890
Frances Benjamin Johnston (attrib.) |