Hans-Christian Adam

I picked this up in B&N bargain pile because it looked like an interesting photography book. While the photos were beautiful, Curtis's original explanations that accompany some of them are such a product of their time that I found many of them distasteful. The introduction helped frame the project and gave some clue as to its importance, but for a modern edition I don't think it went far enough to mitigate the exploitative nature of Curtis's work.

Controversial though it is -- because some of the photos are posed, because it's not "proper" ethnography, because of the author's attitudes -- this is still a unique document of a world that has disappeared. And a stunning collection of photographs. Beyond the "exoticism" and beyond the documentary value, this is a book of portraits of beautiful people.

Life in motion: The forerunner of the moving image English photographer Eadweard Muybridge was a pioneer in visual studies of human and animal locomotion. In 1872, he famously helped settle a bet for former California governor Leland Stanford by photographing a galloping horse. Muybridge invented a complex system of electric shutter releases that captured freeze frames—proving conclusively, for the first time, that a galloping horse lifts all four hooves off the ground for a fraction of a show more second. For the next three decades, Muybridge continued his quest to fully catalog many aspects of human and animal movement, shooting hundreds of horses and other animals—and of nude or draped subjects engaged in various activities such as running, walking, boxing, fencing, and descending a staircase (the latter study inspired Marcel Duchamp’s famous 1912 painting).

This resplendent book traces the life and work of Muybridge, from his early thinking about anatomy and movement to his latest photographic experiments. The complete 781 plates of Muybridge’s groundbreaking Animal Locomotion (1887) are reproduced here. In addition, Muybridge’s handmade and extremely rare first illustrated album, The Attitudes of Animals in Motion (1881) is reproduced in its entirety. A detailed chronology by British researcher Stephen Herbert throws new light on one of the most important pioneers of photography. Text in English, French, and German show less

The essays and picture descriptions are bilingual German/English/French. This collection of over 100 photos, representing people across the US, is beautiful though it's smaller size (about 5"x7") is not as impressive as the portfolio-sized volume I have seen previously.[return]The essays provide an overview of Curtis' life, which I had been unaware of.