Plate Number 527. A-C: Spanking a child

Art Historical Context

Step into the groundbreaking world of motion photography with *Plate Number 527. A-C: Spanking a child* by Eadweard Muy, created in 1887. This collotype print, part of Muybridge's monumental *Animal Locomotion* series, captures a sequence of three images (A-C) depicting a man spanking a child Measuring 20.6 × 34.6 cm in its image area on a larger 48.26 × 60.96 cm sheet, it exemplifies the British-American photographer's pioneering chronophotography—using multiple cameras triggered in rapid succession to "freeze" movement. Muybridge's work revolutionized visual science and art, bridging photography, anatomy, and early film. Commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania, the *Animal Locomotion* project produced over 780 plates documenting humans and animals in everyday and athletic actions, influencing figures like Marcel Duchamp and the birth of cinema. The collotype medium, a precise photomechanical process, allowed for richly detailed reproductions faithful to Muybridge's originals, making complex motion studies accessible to scholars and artists. Today, housed in the National Gallery of Art's Corcoran Collection (acquired via museum purchase in 1887), this provocative plate sparks reflection on Victorian-era domestic life and the ethics of visual documentation. Muybridge's unflinching gaze reminds us how photography once dissected human behavior frame by frame, forever altering our perception of time and motion.

About the Artist

Eadweard Muybridge · 1830–1904

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was an English-American photographer who revolutionized the understanding of motion through his pioneering chronophotographic studies. Born Edward James Muggeridge in Kingston upon Thames, England, he emigrated to America and became famous first for his dramatic landscape photographs of Yosemite Valley, then for his groundbreaking motion studies that proved horses li...