APPARENT MOVEMENT

Muybridge and Stanford's efforts followed the interest of many people of their time. Doctors and philosophers alike studied and tried to understand the phenomenon of "apparent motion." How is it that rapidly changing visual perceptions sometimes merge into one? How is it that spinning wheels sometimes seem to stop? The nineteenth century was a century of fascination with motion. A time of inventions that were sometimes teaching aids, sometimes toys—and often both.

At the same time, it was a time of scientific research and the pursuit of accuracy. Muybridge's photographs had a great impact on the idea of how movement should be "correctly" depicted - and not just that of horses. However, the pursuit of "photographic accuracy" by some painters gradually led others to depict the world as we really perceive it. Not as it is perceived and recorded by photographic devices, but as we, humans, have an impression of it. The pursuit of realism was paradoxically also brought to us by Impressionism and Cubism. And it once again reminded us that every method of depiction comes from its time - after all, even painters who did not use perspective did not see the world differently than we see it. And they were not any less skilled or perhaps more naive.