Athletes. Back summersault – Vintage Print
![Athletes. Back summersault, [San Francisco] : Muybridge, c1881. — historic photograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/df/dfbc4a124e54-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
A window into the past: Athletes. Back summersault, preserved in this historic photograph. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
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Athletes. Back summersault
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Few sequences from the 1880s capture a body in midair as clearly as this one, which shows an acrobat completing a backward somersault. It appears as plate 104 in Eadweard Muybridge's *The Attitudes of Animals in Motion*, published in 1881 and copyrighted to Muybridge that year. He made the underlying exposures at Palo Alto, California, in 1878 and 1879, using a line of cameras that tripped in quick succession as the subject moved past. Each frame broke a single movement into a series of still positions, a method that helped settle long-running questions about how bodies actually move.
| Created / published | [San Francisco] : Muybridge, c1881. |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 photographic print : albumen. |
| Genre | and LC-USZC4-13695 for images of this index." |
| Notes | Illus. in: The attitudes of animals in motion : a series of photographs illustrating the consecutive positions assumed by animals in performing various movements; executed at Palo Alto, California, in 1878 and 1879, no. 104. Copyright 1881 by Edw. J. Muybridge. Title from Index to Illustrations" in book. |
| Subjects | Acrobatics--California--Palo Alto--1870-1880. Athletes--California--Palo Alto--1870-1880. Human locomotion--California--Palo Alto--1870-1880. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 5,181 × 4,099 px · prints to 17 × 14 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-226752 |
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