Rather appositely for my run, the exhibition is called ‘On the move’ and seeks to show how photography came to give new insights into the motion of people and animals and<\/em> to influence the work of artists, who had sometimes struggled to capture the true dynamics of movement in static media such as painting and sculpture.<\/p>\n Miller waffled on a little too portentously for my liking but my interest was piqued and so on Saturday I made my way to the Estorick in Highbury and Islington in north-east London. I took the train \u2013 it’s a little far to run.<\/p>\n The exhibition starts with the work of the improbably named 19th Century photographer Eadward Muybridge<\/a> who was commissioned by Leland Stanford, a horse-racing governor of California, to settle a bet about how horses ran. Because of the speed of movement as they galloped over the turf, no-one was quite sure how their legs moved and, crucially, whether at any point, all four legs left the ground. Eventually \u2013 the work was interrupted by Muybridge’s trial for the murder of his wife’s lover \u2013 by using a clever arrangement of trip-wires and high-speed cameras, he was able to capture a sequence that settled the point. They do.<\/p>\n It was a breakthrough that ultimately convinced the artistic community to change their ways. The previous tradition of rendering horses with a rocking horse gait (fore and hind legs stretched out) was abandoned. Curiously, there was initial resistance because Muybridge’s images differed from the perceived reality (probably largely based on paintings); only after he had assembled a moving image from his sequence of stills to re-create the familiar running motion of a horse were people convinced that the camera had not<\/em> been lying.<\/p>\n These days with a digital camera, it is quite easy to replicate this technique. I got my daughter to film me in motion and this is the sequence that it produces. It reveals that even with my leaden step, there is one instant at which both feet are off the ground:<\/p>\n Muybridge went on to apply his technique to other animals, and to men and women, mostly scantily clad (his interests were prurient as well as scientific). But although his technique captures the elements of motion, it loses the dynamic. The movement is broken apart and his images are strangely static. The eye does a poor job of re-creating the motion in the mind.<\/p>\n A different approach and one that is more visually appealing was developed by the French photographer Etienne Jules Marey<\/a> who worked out how to capture a sequence of stills on a single image. He did this using cameras with high speed shutters. Marey’s images retain a sense of dynamism and are immediately more… arresting. He photographed runners and jumpers and even birds in flight. The latter impressed him so much he commissioned an artist to render the bird in a statute that is on show at the gallery.<\/p>\n In later work \u2013 some of it funded by the French military in the hope that the analysis of motion might help to devise better training regimes for their troops \u2013 Marey sought to abstract the movement into its elements. He would dress his subjects in black but affix bright white strips to their arms and legs. There resulting images have faded somewhat but retain an mathematical beauty, swathed in curves that connect the swinging lines; they are like spirographs partly unwound.<\/p>\n Marey’s chronophotographs, as he dubbed them, were artistic in themselves but clearly inspired artists such as Giancomo Balla to try to capture the dynamism of motion in paintings, as here below in The Hand of the Violinist<\/em>. I have to say, I prefer Marey’s photos.<\/p>\n In the 1920s the baton was passed back to the US where an MIT engineer, Harold Eugene Edgerton<\/a>, improved on Marey’s technique by incorporating multiflash or strobe lighting. The regular bright pulses of light gave much better illumination of the subject and, along with faster emulsions, yielded crisper images. Edgerton also worked on high speed photography and was responsible for iconic images<\/a> of splashing milk drops and bullets smashing through fruit that many of you will already know (though none are represented in the exhibition).<\/p>\n Though an avowed engineer (“I am after the facts. Only the facts.”), Edgerton collaborated with the Italian photographic artist Gjon Mili<\/a> whose pictures are among the most memorable of the exhibition. Using a creative combination of lights attached to his subject and bright flashes, Mili conjured some brilliant images. A particular favourite of mine was his picture of a violinist in action. To me this is more evocative of the music and the musician’s artistry than Bella’s painting.<\/p>\n I’ll say little more – this is only meant to be a taster. It’s not a very large exhibition but I found it absolutely fascinating; there is an eclectic collection of images and objects. Miller, for all his bombast, was not too stuffy to include cartoons images of Billy Whizz from The Beano<\/em><\/a>, arms multiplied as he threw snowballs, that made me smile in recollection. But more eloquent and more moving was a sculpture of fluid beauty inspired by the wing-beats of a dove taking to the air:<\/p>\n Stirred by the exhibition I made my own homage to Marey and Mili. I will leave it to the reader to judge whether this constitutes any kind of poetry in motion. I fear not.<\/p>\n Which brings me back to running. The images from the exhibition each sought to extract an instant of stillness from the moving subject, whether runner or musician or horse. In my own running I am also seeking a kind of stillness – a moment of peace, an escape from turmoil.<\/p>\n Curiously, as I headed out the door on Saturday to take the train up to London I grabbed my old copy of John Updike’s<\/a> Rabbit, Run<\/em>. I suppose this blogpost on running was on my mind and triggered a memory of the title. The book is the poignant and painful story \u2013 written in Updike’s trademark exquisite prose \u2013 of Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom for whom the American dream is not working, though he can’t figure out why. His solution is to keep running away, but he can never seem to outrun his misery.<\/p>\n The cover refers to the book’s opening which has Angstrom dallying in a side-street on his way home from work, watching some kids playing basketball. He is reminded of his own youthful prowess at the sport; he tries to join in, to recapture something he knows he has lost.<\/p>\n I don’t want to overload this piece with symbolic weight. I am not the tragic figure of Rabbit Angstrom, though my own recourse to running is<\/em> a kind of escape. I thought I might<\/em> be able to use the book to make a connection. There was one, but it turned out to be astonishingly coincidental.<\/p>\n As I mulled and turned the book over in my hand I read that the photograph on the front cover of young Americans playing basketball had been taken by Gjon Mili.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a slight delay, I had an idea for a blog post and I’m going to run with it. Hope you can keep up. I have started to run. I have known for a long time that I needed to … Continue reading ![\"Muybridge's](\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4070\/4304428495_35c7cbff8b_o.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Stephen](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2728\/4304428711_3bbe6cfffa.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Marey's](\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4038\/4304428891_f75cfd5ed1.jpg\")
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\nMarey’s ‘lineograph’?<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Violinist](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2793\/4305174042_b7aa3e2031.jpg\")
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\nThe hand of the violinist (Balla)<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Violinist](\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4002\/4304429331_ba3cfd4382.jpg\")
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\nMili’s violonist<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Dove](\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4030\/4304429599_9426850743_m.jpg\")
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\nPoetry in motion.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Stephen](\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4034\/4305174596_50465c44a8.jpg\")
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\nProse in motion?<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Updike](\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4013\/4305174768_053bda4536_m.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n