Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

While Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential motion studies—created with a series of separate cameras activated by trip wires—are credited with initiating the concept of the moving/motion picture (film), they were originally published as a way to provide an easily accessible, cheap alternative to live model for artists. Based in a long academic tradition, Muybridge’s nude women engage in poses and activities akin to those of neoclassical artists’ oriental slave girls. Although using actual nude female models during the prudish Victorian era pushed the boundaries of morality, Muybridge’s photographic studies with their simple, gridded backdrops were viewed as more scientific and, thus, socially acceptable.