Muybridge’s Horse in Motion
1.
After the beginning of the gallop, there are counts when the horse is in the air, her
legs withdrawn, a diamond shape.
This is called suspension.
2.
Her name is Sallie Gardner.
She’s by Vandal, out of Charlotte Thompson, Kentucky bred, of Irish pedigree, a
Birdcatcher.
Now she belongs to the patron, gold rush tycoon Leland Stanford, who wants to
see her in slow motion, to prove a point.
3.
There’s more than one way to bet on a racehorse.
A pot maker etches terra cotta, giving the animal wings.
Another artist paints one hoof on the ground.
4.
The camera can make a fool of a realist.
5.
The English photographer has changed his name, returning to the Anglo-Saxon.
Eadweard Muybridge will be misspelled on his gravestone.
6.
As Maybridge, may the bridge break.
Eadweard’s head is hit in a stagecoach crash.
In the Philip Glass score for The Photographer, this might be when the staccato
starts.
7.
His wife is Flora Shallcross Stone.
When they marry, she’s twenty-one, already a divorcée.
Her lover is a theater critic.
That she writes to him shouldn’t be fatal.
8.
The photographer shoots the other man who could’ve fathered their son.
He pleads insanity bur gets off on justifiable homicide.
He turns to wet-place collodion.
9.
After the acquittal, he captures Sallie Gardner at a Gallop in twelve frames.
10.
He will live to age seventy-four.
He’ll photograph bison, waltzes, and the American West. He'll want an homage to
the Great Lakes for his garden.
Then he’ll die with prostate cancer while digging a pond.
11.
The child is Florado Helios Muybridge. After the mother wastes away, Eadweard
sends the boy to a Catholic orphanage.
For him, this means, instead of encyclopedias, the obscurity of genealogy sites.
More is known about the horse.
12.
Sallie is the balanced chestnut of Leland the baron robber from New York.
Even her jockey is a forger.
Sallie’s made to run on the private Palo Alto track, tugging the shutters with
thread.
The lines are called tripwires.
The cameras in wooden boxes, at last, electric.
Holly Mitchell, "Muybridge's Horse in Motion" from Mare's Nest. Copyright © 2023 by Holly Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of Sarabande Books, Inc.
Source:
Mare's Nest
(Sarabande Books, Inc., 2023)