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• 1 2016-09-28T15:26:01+00:00 An Introduction to Eadweard Muybridge 53 An Introduction to Eadweard Muybridge plain 2020-12-29T16:02:33+00:00
  Written transcript for video above, "An introduction to Eadweard Muybridge, Part I." Pictures cited in the video.
  
  By Byron Wolfe
  
  Eadweard Muybridge was an unusual man. To begin with, his given name was Edward James Muggeridge when he grew up at Kingston upon Themes in England. In 1850 he moved to the United States and changed his name to Edward James Muygridge. He used three different names in the decades that followed. After his death, his tombstone engraving included a misspelled version of his last name, giving him a sixth and final appellation, this one certainly unchosen.
  
  The main reason he is known today is because of a horse, or rather, a photograph of a horse, that he made in 1877. The animal was Occident, owned by California Governor Leland Stanford. Muybridge was the photographer who figured out both the mechanics and chemistry required to record something that was moving so rapidly that it would otherwise have been rendered as a ghostly blur by the then relatively young technology of photography.
  
  In this grid of pictures, Muybridge photographed Sallie Gardner, another of Stanford’s horses, with a bank of cameras lined up in a sequence that made individual exposures in a rapid, timed succession. He went on to make tens of thousands of these “Motion Studies” while working at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 1885 he published an 11-volume book titled Animal Locomotion. These sequenced pictures preceded what ultimately became moving pictures, or movies.
  
  Before Muybridge became known for his motion studies, he was a landscape photographer based in San Francisco, California. His subjects included many of the most iconic 19th century western landscapes, including Yosemite, in California’s Sierra Nevada range.
  
  In 1875, after returning from one of his many photographic outings, Muybridge, then aged 40, came home to his 20 year old wife, Flora. She had just given birth to a son whom Muybridge took to be both the likeness and the progeny of Major Harry Larkyns, a San Francisco theater critic and Flora’s companion. Enraged, Muybridge tracked down Larkyns in Napa, California, and with the words “My name is Muybridge and I have a message for your from my wife!” shot him dead.
  
  Muybridge was tried for the murder and was acquitted for reasons of “justifiable homicide.” His lawyers employed early versions of an insanity defense and cited his photographs as evidence of his imbalanced mental state. That was, after all, the only way to explain some of the incredibly dangerous vantage points he chose for some of his pictures. As one who has stood at the precise locations of hundreds of his pictures, his attorney’s claim of insanity is somewhat justified.
  
  
  
  Written transcript for video above, "An introduction to Eadweard Muybridge, Part II." Pictures cited in the video.
  
  In a trip that was arranged prior to the trial, but that proved to be a well-timed getaway from San Francisco’s post-murder press, Muybridge boarded a ship in the San Francisco Bay in the dead of night. The steamer was “The Honduras” a ship owned by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and it was headed to Central America. The ship is seen here in the distance. When he eventually de-boarded in Panama, he did so as Eduardo Santiago Muybridge, the fourth in his slowly animating sequence of names.
  
  The Honduras visited thirteen ports with extended stays in both Panama and Guatemala. He made hundreds of photographs during his travels. After about a year, he returned to San Francisco and produced a limited number of photographic albums for sale.
  
  Each album is unique in picture count and selection but they are typically embossed on the leather bound cover with gold text and the title Photographic Studies of Central America and the Isthmus of Panama, by Muybridge. Inside, they had an even longer and more detailed designation on the title page: The Pacific Coast of Central America and Mexico; The Isthmus of Panama; Guatemala; and the Cultivation and Shipment of Coffee, Illustrated by Muybridge.
  
  To date, eleven albums are known to exist, with a few smaller collections of pictures scattered across North America. Their individual picture counts vary, but the single largest volume, with a numbered sequence of 264 pictures, is held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
  
  Muybridge’s photographs document everything from the public plazas and colonial architecture of the cities, to the workers and processing methods of several nascent coffee fincas in the Guatemalan Highlands. He photographed nearly all of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s in-holdings.
  
   
• 1 2016-09-28T15:24:27+00:00 Collecting Muybridge 15 Notes on the Muybridge Central American albums gallery 2020-08-21T16:51:02+00:00 As of this writing, there are eleven known bound Muybridge albums housed at ten different institutions. In addition, there is one unbound (partial) album, and three small collections of individual pictures, each held at separate institutions.
  
  Only a single album contains every picture from Muybridge’s travels and there’s also only one known “Supplement to Catalogue,” a promotional brochure that Muybridge used to describe and list the photographs and to advertise for print orders. Although unconfirmed, there have been reports of original pictures on display in Venezuela. Regardless of the precise figure for album count, the Central American pictures are exceedingly rare and few people have seen the body of photographs either in part or in whole. The location of Muybridge’s original negatives are unknown, although a few were recovered from his garden.
  
  The albums are most commonly cited as:
  Muybridge, Eadweard. The Pacific Coast of Central America and Mexico: The Isthmus of Panama; Guatemala; and the Cultivation and Shipment of Coffee. San Francisco, 1876.
  
  List of Archives with Muybridge Albums or with Images from Albums:
  
  Stanford University Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives, Rare Books Division, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California                  
  One album in two volumes, 121 pictures
  Given to F.E. Johnston, Muybridge’s defense lawyer
  (described in the print publication as “album A”)
  
  Stanford University Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives, Rare Books Division, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California      
  One album in one volume, 59 pictures
  Given to Fran Frank Shay, Stanford’s secretary
  (described in the print publication as “album B”) 
  
  The Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
  One album in one volume, 100 pictures
  Provenance unknown
  
  The California State Library, Rare Materials Reading Room, Sacramento, California
  One album in one volume, 62 pictures                                                                                  
  Given to Mrs. Wirt Pendegast, widow of his defense lawyer (Pendegast died while Muybridge was in Central America).
  
  Cornell University, Kroch Library Rare & Manuscripts, Ithaca, New York
  One album in one volume, 71 pictures
  First owner was Marshall Howard Saville (1867-1935) an archaeologist and professor at Columbia University. It passed to the Huntington Free Library, then to the Museum of the American Indian Heye Foundation, then to Cornell University. 
  
  The Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts     
  One album in two volumes, (94 and 80 pictures respectively)                                             
  Given to Captain S.V. Storm, purchased from Daniel Lombard in 1878
  
  Niagara University Library, Special Collections, New York
  One album in one volume, 60 pictures                                                                      
  Provenance unknown
  
  Special Collections and University Archives, Stony Brook University, The State University of New York          
  Note from Byron: The information that follows is different than what appears in the physical book. At some point in the manuscript writing and editing, a couple of errors were made that endured. What follows is revised and accurate:
  
  One album in four volumes, 264 pictures (the only known complete collection of all images, numbered on each page in a continuous sequence from #4219 - #4482)
  Provenance unknown – volume one has an inscription in pencil on the inside cover. It notes that it was purchased for $150. A red library stamp has "Sept. 25. 1967" probably noting the library's date of acquisition. In volume two there is a handwritten inscription "To C.E.B. from A.B. 1880." 
  
  The Museum of Modern Art, New York                                                                              
  One album in one volume, 120 pictures
  Provenance unknown
  
  Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA), Antigua, Guatemala      
  One album in one volume, 120 pictures
  Provenance unknown
  
  The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery                                                 
  A partial unbound album, 75 pictures
  Provenance unknown
  
  University of California, Los Angeles, Library Department of Special Collections
  6 pictures, unbound
  Provenance unknown
  
  The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California          
  18 pictures, mostly unbound                           
  Provenance unknown
  
  Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/ Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal      
  5 pictures, unbound                           
  Provenance unknown
  
  Do you know of any other Muybridge albums not listed here, or information about provenance? If so, please let us know in the comments below.