Ascending and Descending Stairs
date: label: date made
content: 1884-1886
name: label: maker
content: Muybridge, Eadweard
notes: label: Description
content: Eadweard Muybridge’s cyanotypes are working proofs (contact prints) made from the more than 20,000 negatives he took at the University of Pennsylvania from 1884 to 1886. There Muybridge photographed human and animal subjects in motion from lateral (parallel), front and rear positions. For the lateral views he used up to 36 lenses in 12 to 24 cameras placed at 90-degree angles to his subjects, and he added more cameras, each holding up to 12 lenses and placed at 60-degree angles, for the front and rear “foreshortening” views.
label: Description
content: Since the original negatives no longer exist, the cyanotypes record full images before Muybridge edited and cropped them for publication. Over 800 sets of proofs exist in the unique collection found in the Photographic History Collection of the National Museum of American History. Comparisons between Muybridge’s working cyanotype proofs and his final collotype prints prove that he freely reprinted, cropped, deleted or substituted negatives to make the assemblage of 781 collotypes in the portfolio <i>Animal Locomotion</i>.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: made at
content: United States: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
topic: label: Subject
content: Women
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
label: See more items in
content: Photography
label: See more items in
content: Eadweard Muybridge Cyanotypes
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PG.003856.0387
label: accession number
content: 98473
label: catalog number
content: 3856.0387
label: maker number
content: 1419
objectType: label: Object Name
content: cyanotype
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 12 7/8 in x 21 3/8 in; 32.7025 cm x 54.2925 cm