Books and Manuscripts

1887. Collotype; 18 11/16 x 23 13/16 in. (475 x 605 mm). Scattered light soiling in margins; small chip, top left corner. Hinge-mounted and in mat and in frame, 19 3/4 x 24 5/8 in. (502 x 625 mm).

A fascinating collotype from pioneering early photographer Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion, the first scientific study to use photography. Muybridge created his Animal Locomotion photographs after partnering with the University of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia publisher J.B. Lippincott in the mid-1880s. He was given a $5,000 stipend and a studio at 36th and Pine streets in West Philadelphia, and from 1883-86, he and his team created over 100,000 photographs recording human and animal movements, often recruiting students and teachers from the University, as well as animals from the University's veterinary school and the Philadelphia Zoo. "The point of taking these photographs was, according to Muybridge, to generate 'the law governing the walk' and it is this law and this action that takes primacy in Animal Locomotion. Walking is the subject of the first fifty-eight plates...Plate 3, a fast walk, fist clenched, arms swinging..." (p. 125, Louise Hornby, Still Modernism: Photography, Literature, Film, 2017). Animal Locomotion was published in 1887 in a subscription-based portfolio, where prospective buyers could choose 100 photos from a selection of over 700, for $100.