Pronto
and his rider strode past a battery of 20 cameras as the shutter of each
triggered in quick succession for a 1/1000 second. Seen in sequence, the
resulting photographs record the horse and rider in nearly cinematic fashion.
This ingenious setup was devised by Eadweard Muybridge, whose long
investigation of human and animal movements of all kinds was published as a
portfolio of 781 composite prints entitled Animal Locomotion: An
Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movement
1872–1885. His photographs proved valuable for both science and art, making
visible the mechanics of actions too fleeting for the human eye.