Mariana Pereira Vieira

In this body of work, I source Eadweard Muybridge’s iconic motion studies, started on commission for Governor Stanford of California to settle a bet about horses.  Muybridge’s plates posed male subjects in powerful, athletic action, while modestly covered the subjects’ genitals. The female models are posed walking, sitting, crawling, twirling, sweeping, mopping, taking care of children, and are exposed unclothed. Did these women have any agency in how they would be documented and researched for posterity? The series of original plates, when animated, play in an infinite loop. In the early days of photography, did they know or understand that they would be captured on an infinite loop to be displayed forever?

Curated by Sharifa Lafon.