Art Institute of Chicago

Man Bicycling

Etienne-Jules Marey

Date

1890s

Medium

Gelatin silver lantern slide (chronophotograph)

Culture

France

Department

Photography and Media

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey’s lifelong fascination with bodily movement led him to develop what he called “chronophotography”—meaning “photography of time”—a process that may have influenced the locomotion studies of Eadweard Muybridge, which are generally better known. To create his chronophotographs, Marey modified an ordinary camera by placing a rotating metal disk with multiple slots cut at regular intervals behind the lens and leaving the lens open. As the subject moved in front of a dark background, the disk acted as a shutter, exposing a sequence of images on a single photographic plate. As a member of the Académie Nationale de Médicine, Marey likely made this view of a bicyclist as part of a campaign to develop sports attire that would maximize comfort and minimize fatigue. Cubist, Futurist, and Dada artists all looked to Marey’s work as they attempted to picture the interdependence of space and time formulated by Albert Einstein.

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