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Muybridge's seemingly artless photography sequences are one of the great wonders of photography, fascinating & humorous. How else could one react to a series of photos showing a nude woman stepping on to a chair to pour cold water on to another? Or to two young men playing leap frog?

Here are rather average bodies - by contemporary standards - throwing baseballs, kneeling & turning, heaving rocks, crawling, descending stairs, walking, running, carrying buckets, attempting a somersault while a pigeon crosses the path. The backgrounds of graphs & lines not only provide the artist's units of measurement, but establish a visual continuity more modern than he could have known.

The Male and Female Figure in Motion is a classic collection, beautifully produced & inexpensively priced. Great for artists & lovers of photography, this volume is part of Dover Publication's Pictorial Archive series, which means you are free to use them in your arts & crafts or post them on web pages. Dover also offers a companion collection of Muybridge's important animal locomotion photographs.

Bob Rixon