Another Regular Conversational Pit Stop During Our Calls Was The Guests I Was Interviewing On My Radio

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Master of a new medium

Eadweard J. Muybridge, Yosemite Creek: Summit of Falls at Low Water, 1872, mammoth-plate albumen print. California State Library, Sacramento

Tate Britain’s latest exhibition is an exploration of the work of the oddly named but immensely talented Eadward Muybridge, whose Studies in Animal Locomotion explored the idea of the moving image two decades before cinema was invented. Born Edward Muggeridge in Britain in 1830, he first emigrated to America in 1855 and built his career photographing San Francisco and the Yosemite national park in the years after the Civil War. He proved in 1878, using a sequence of photographs, that a horse’s hooves do indeed all leave the ground during a gallop, and he used the same technique to explore human movement in his seminal work in the 1880s, for which he remains most famous.

The Studies in Animal Locomotion remain interesting, revealing a particularly Victorian combination of science and voyueurism; attractive male and female models performed endless movements for Muybridge who captured the images using multiple cameras, since shutter speeds were not up to the task in the 1880s. Plenty of the ‘studies’ have no apparent scientific purpose, including one curtly titled ‘[Model] 8 pouring bucket of water over 6′, which shows one naked woman dumping a chilly stream over her squealing companion. Though indicating that Muybridge’s intentions were not always in the name of pure science; the more whimsical studies are still charming, especially one of a model leaning back in a chair smoking a cigarette and looking utterly relaxed.

Less ground-breaking, but frequently more beautiful, Muybridges’s earlier images of Yosemite and the lighthouses of the Californian coast form a substantial part of the exhibition. The photographer was hired to collect images of lighthouses in the 1860s for a federal authority, but the results are far from dry documentary: gorgeous albumen prints reveal sea spray turned to smoke by slow shutter speeds and cliff faces leaping out in almost 3D clarity. Elsewhere, he reveals the lives of people in transition; the exhibition contains photos from new coffee plantations in Guatemala and of rebellious Native Americans in California. San Francisco is captured in all its pre-1906 earthquake glory in a 17-foot panorama made up of several large photographs laid painstakingly end to end. The effect is somewhat distorted by the flatness of what should be a 360 degree view, but this aberration, along with the seemingly empty streets (the long exposure could not capture moving people in the photographs) gives the view an unearthly beauty a more accurate image would lack.

Muybridge’s work indicates a photographer who succeeded in bridging the gap between scientific accuracy and painterly aesthetics in the new medium. Even where the beauty of his images is unintentional, their preservation indicates an appreciation on his part of perfect imperfection. His motion studies and the zoopraxiscope, a prototype of the film projector he invented, have assured his place in history, but his landscape work and photojournalism are what really stand out for the modern viewer.

i think about the 'john thinks certain paul songs like dear boy / hey jude are about him' thing a lot. because on one hand yes it's amusing and i get why people make fun of him for saying all this. but that said imagine being john lennon and you're like hey so long shot here but i think these songs written by the guy who i started my writing journey with and have worked beside for years and i understand better than anyone else and i know inside and out body and mind and i wrote eyeball to eyeball with yeah they are probably about me. and everyone's like no and you're crazy. like........ i know in the 70s john was paranoid in ways but i think maybe we can give him the benefit of the doubt on this one thing.

With The Chants (in all, comprised of Joe Ankrah, Eddie Ankrah, Edmund Amoo, Nat Smeda, and Alan Harding) and Little Richard, backstage at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton on October 12, 1962. Photos by Les Chadwick.

“[Joe Ankrah noted] ‘It was bad enough that the modern moods [racism] never gave a black group a chance, but if not for Paul and his friends, we would have never stayed together… In fact, I think that meeting the Beatles changed the direction of my life.’ Ankrah also makes it clear that, in a sea of intolerance, Paul and the Beatles stood out, and stood up for him and his bandmates. ‘They were very cool guys, and meeting them gave us a look at real opportunity.’ […] [T]he Beatles, surrounded by postwar racial and religious bigotry, went against the grain and gave a black group a break, even was they were pursuing their own dream. […] ‘Could I have imagined a future like that? Who could? But, looking back, I knew they had something special, and a level of compassion that was truly unusual for a band on the move.’ - Joe Ankrah [of The Chants], Beatles friend whose band was pushed through racial barriers by the boys” - When They Were Boys by Larry Kane “They went ‘apeshit’ when we started to sing. I can still see George and John racing up to the stage with their mouths stuffed with hot dogs or whatever. The invitation to make our Cavern debut was given as soon as we finished ‘A Thousand Stars’ for them. They insisted we perform that very night. Everything happened completely spontaneously from that point. The Beatles themselves offered to back us when we told them we’d never worked with a band before. We then rehearsed four songs with them and then we ran home to tell all and sundry that we had ‘made it’!” When Brian Epstein arrived at the Cavern that night he refused to allow the Beatles to back us, but they collectively persuaded him to change his mind – and when he heard us he invited us to appear on many subsequent appearances with them.” - Eddie Amoo, Mersey Beat via TriumphPC “When the Beatles became big they were great about us. They went round telling everyone we were great, and when they were on Juke Box Jury, they played our record ‘I Could Write A Book’ and the Beatles raved about it and voted us a hit!” - Alan Harding, Record Mirror, June 25, 1966

The Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, England | 25 March 1963 (I)

considering that a lot of people are labelling the person on the far left of the first photo as ringo, i just want to compare the clothes in these two photos to prove that it is, in fact, klaus, because i believe these were taken on the same day.