Feature: Exhibition - Proving a horse can fly- Muybridge at Tate Britain from Sept 8

Published: 02 September 2010

EADWEARD Muybridge was the man who famously proved a horse can fly. His experiment in 1878 – using a sequence of cameras and trip wires – proved indisputably that a horse lifts all four hooves off the ground whilst galloping. 

British-born Muybridge, who emigrated to the US in the 1850s, pushed the limits of the camera’s possibilities, creating world-famous images of animals and humans in motion and anticipating film and moving image. 

This exhibition, which opens on Wednesday, brings together the full range of his art for the first time, and explores the ways in which Muybridge created and honed his remarkable images, which continue to resonate with artists today. 

Highlights include a 17ft panorama of San Francisco and recreations of the zoopraxiscope – Muybridge’s method of projecting animated versions of his photo­graphs as short moving sequences.

His influence has forever changed our understanding and interpretation of the world, and can be found in many diverse fields, from Marcel Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending a Staircase” and countless works by Francis Bacon, to the blockbuster film The Matrix and Philip Glass’s opera The Photographer.

• Muybridge is at Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1, from September 8–January 16. Book online at www.tate.org.uk or call 020 7887 8888 (booking fee applies, booking line open 9.45am-6pm daily), £10 (£8.50 concessions)