Eadweard Muybridge Exhibition at Tate Britain

Enjoyed visiting the Eadweard Muybridge exhibition at Tate Britain last week. This is the third exhibition I've been to in the last year or so, in London, featuring works of 19th Century photographers. The other two exhibitions were Camille Silvy at the National Portrait Gallery and Points of View and you may have read my previous posts on them.

Muybridge is probably better known for “Animals in Motion” photographs, and these are well represented in this exhibition. What is more interesting to me was his earlier photographs, his landscapes taken in Yosemite, the reportage style stereo pictures and the large panoramas of San Francisco,

From the viewpoint of the early years of the 21^st century we are well used to manipulation in photography; the personal computer and digital camera have made that fairly straight forward. Silvy and Muybridge were using the technology available at the time – mid/late nineteenth century – which was the wet collodion process and large format glass plate negatives. Some of Muybridge’s negatives were 17 inch by 22 inches, and yet he managed the make prints from multiple negatives for examples clouds from Pigeon Point Lighthouse were printed into later photos of the Mariposa Trail in Yosemite.

I really must get to Yosemite next time I'm in California.