Videodisc inside its protective sleeve;  brochure with table of contents to images below.
Creative Commons LicenseJeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
Videodisc inside its protective sleeve;  brochure with table of contents to images below.

James Sheldon & Bob Stein Publish Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Motion Studies in Fluid Motion

1990
Edweard Muybridge Motion Studies videodisc cover
Creative Commons LicenseJeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons

In 1990 historian of photography James L. Sheldon and Bob Stein of the Voyager Company in Santa Monica, California, issued the laserdisc entitled Eaweard Muybrdge: Motion Studies. This developed out of Sheldon's thesis for the Master of Arts in Visual Studies at MIT. The content was images from Muybridge's Animal Locomotion (1887). Publication by laserdisc made continuous motion animation of Muybridge's motion studies possible for the first time. Since then the Internet made it much easier to show animations of Muybridge's work, and samples of many of Muybridge's work in animated form may be seen in the Wikipedia or in the website, precinemahistory.net.

When he published the laserdisc Bob Stein published this note on the back cover of the sleeve:

"Two thoughts occurred to me when Jim Sheldon first showed me the fluid animations he made from Edaweard Muybridge's motion study photographs. The first was of how frustrated Muybridge must have been since he lacked the technology to display the photos in continuous motion. It gave me chills to realize that 100 years after he made the images we can finally see them as Muybridge undoubtedly saw them in his mind's eye. Thanks to Jim Sheldon, Muybridge's role as the world's first cinematographer is now firmly established. The second, for which I was completely unprepared was the profound beauty of the work. Taken together Muybridge catalog of images—horses trotting, birds flying, men running and jumping,. women dancing and bathing, and children crawling—comprise a haunting ballet of remarkable grace and elegance."

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