Falls of the Yosemite

~Muybridge became fascinated with animal locomotion in the earliest years of his career, when he first established his practice as a photographer of the Western landscape. He described this budding interest to a reporter covering the Animal Locomotion project in August 1885....

In 1871, Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) traveled on the steamship Shubrick from San Francisco to the headlands of Point Reyes, some thirty-four miles north. With a small party, he landed on the beach at Drake’s Bay, so called because this inlet is supposed to be the stopping place of the British navigator during his Pacific voyage of 1579, and...

Objects such as this urn, presented to the president of a canal company, reflect the dramatic changes taking place in the United States during the nineteenth century. A revolution in transportation technology was sweeping over the young nation, and improvements such as canals were opening up new trade routes, to the great benefit of the economy...