pictures, including self-portraits, in a series he called “Animal Locomotion.” Both scientific and
artistic, a Prospectus promoted his seminal work as “A work for the Art Connoisseur, the Scientist,
the Artist, and the Student of Art of Nature.”The images—which veer from playful and sophisticated
to analytic and austere—were published in sets of 100 (the contents to be determined by the
subscriber or the author), with 781 in total.
A tantalizing precursor to 20th-century film making, today Muybridge’s serial imagery seems to
play for the viewer as a visually stunning, silent reel.