Racialising the Virile Body: Eadweard Muybridge's Locomotion Studies 1883-1887

This essay offers a new reading of Eadweard Muybridge's photographic investigations of human and animal locomotion, conducted at the University of Pennsylvania in 1883-87. The essay argues that this Muybridge project reveals an investment in gendered evolutionary race science, evident in three related sites, all connected to anthropometry. The first site concerns the anthropometric grid; the second site concerns scientists' investment in this research; and the third concerns the racialising and gendering of some of the male models engaged for this project. The essay's methodology includes extensive archival research and close readings of photographic images. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishers