The Bragaglia Brothers

The Bragaglia brothers were one of the first group of people to capture movement within a photographic process. They visually captured human movement, be it the movement on the arm or leg, walking, nodding your head or even sitting on a chair. As well as capturing the frozen image they also capture the motion in what ever was moving, rather than having that still image.

The way they achieved this was keeping the shutter speed on the camera open as long as possible while the object/human was moving. This then created the multiple images of the subject moving.

During this time, this would have been a benchmark in photographic process. It is quite crazy to see what they did over 100 years ago, compared to what we can do now. Although I do love the raw/distorted feel to the images. A good technique to show time through still images, although its very complicated to capture 24 hours in one image.

Etienne Jules Marey

Etienne Jules Marey was originally a French scientist and chronophotographer. Etienne is believed to be one of the pioneers of photography and cinema. Etienne found a way to capture various movements of an object through one image.
In 1882 he created a way to record several stages of movement on one photo by using a chronophotographic gun. It would take 12 frames a second of the moving image and record them on the same photographic paper. He studied all animals including birds, dogs, fish and insects. In 1890 he created a book called the ‘Flight of Birds’ that showcased his work.

When the trigger was pulled the plate rotated once in a second, while the shutter opened the same number of times each second. Etienne then pointed the ‘gun’ at the bird, and continued to press the trigger while following the bird with the gun. The result was a plate with 12 different images set around the edge, which showed the different parts of a bird’s flight. Again a very complex but ahead of its time method for capturing moving images.

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.