The photograph “Descending stairs and turning around” by Eadweard Muybridge was taken in the period of 1884-85. It is a sequence of images capturing the motion of a person descending a set of stairs and subsequently turning around. The series is notable for its role in the early study of human and animal locomotion, serving as both a scientific inquiry and an artistic endeavor.
The image displays a grid of sequential photographs arranged in two rows. Each photograph captures a single moment in the motion of a nude figure as they move down a set of stairs. In the top row, the figure is facing the camera and begins the descent; their movement is frozen in different poses at various points while descending the stairs. In the bottom row, after reaching the ground level, the figure turns around and the final images capture the movement of the turn. These photographs exemplify Muybridge’s pioneering work in breaking down motion into individual frames, which laid the groundwork for the development of motion pictures.
