Got lost at Waterloo station. Had my first experience in a London taxi. Took a couple of wrong turns and ended up at Buckingham Palace. Then visited my first ever exhibition at Tate Britain as research for my current photography project.
Needless to say, my recent trip to London was an eventful one.
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'And since, in our passage through this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently than pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute than our sense of good, we become the victims of our feelings, unless in some degree command them.'
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As well as Gothic Literature (cue Dickens and Doyle), one of the main influences of my work has been photographer Eadweard Muybridge, with his exploration into the concept of movement by capturing what is impossible to see with the naked eye.
"Sir Frederick Leighton, president of the Royal Academy, told me that when he first saw my pictures they made him laugh, so at variance were they with artists' notions of animal motion. Then he said he studied them and stopped laughing." [Eadweard Muybridge, 1885]
My visit to the exhibition gave me valuable insight into the mind of Muybridge and his interpretation of movement, shooting at different viewpoints and presenting them in a range of compositions. I was even privileged enough to be able to view the original negatives.
THE FACTS:
- Muybridge emerged as a landscape photographer after the American Civil War (1867).
- First experimented with recording movement in 1877 when he was asked by Leland Stanford (horse trainer and breeder) to study whether a horse had all four feet off the ground during a full gallop. The series was entitled 'The Horse in Motion'.
- Invented the Zoopraxiscope which consisted of two rotating discs that recreated movement.
- Published his work under the name of 'Helios' (meaning "God of the Sun"). He branded his products with the logo of a winged camera and a glowing orb of radiating light.
