APPARENT MOTION

 

Muybridge’s and Stanford’s efforts built on the interests of many people of their time. Doctors and philosophers studied and tried to understand the phenomenon of “apparent motion”. How is it that rapidly alternating visual impressions sometimes merge into one? How is it that spinning wheels sometimes seem to stop?

The 19th century was a century fascinated by movement. It was an era of inventions that were sometimes teaching aids, sometimes toys — and often both.

At the same time, it was an age of scientific research and a striving for precision. Muybridge’s photographs had a major impact on the idea of how movement should be “correctly” depicted — and not only the movement of horses.

The efforts of some painters to achieve “photographic accuracy” gradually led others to depict the world as we truly perceive it. Not as photographic devices perceive and record it, but as we, as humans, experience it.

The pursuit of realism thus paradoxically brought us Impressionism and Cubism. And it reminded us once again that every way of depicting the world belongs to its own time — after all, painters who did not use perspective did not see the world any differently than we do. Nor were they any less skilled or somehow more naïve.