Whilst at the Tate, I saw a lot of his photography and also discovered a lot of history about him. He moved to New York from England when he was 22 and then moved to San Francisco when he was 25. He was involved in a stage coach accident and returned to England to recuperate.
When he moved back to America in 1867, he worked as a photographer, photographing landscapes of valleys and different areas around california. He then began to work for a gentlemen called Leland Stanford who requested him to photograph his horses.
In 1874, his wife has a son fathered by a lover rather than himself. In his rage he killed her lover but was found out and tried for murder. He was acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide.
After this he returns to his photography, taking panoramic pictures of San Francisco and still working for Stanford. In 1877 was when he began to take shots of horses in action. This then progressed to athletes and in 1881 he published a book with all his motion shots of horses and other animals. He experimented with his technique and used high speed shutters to capture this. He would create a line of cameras with trip switches so when the horse set them off, the cameras would take a photo creating the animals in motion.
It was a good trip and I learnt a lot about the Muybridge. I did not learn much about the development of his technique or where the idea came from which would have been more interesting but I saw his photography and his book of animals in motion.
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