Frequency, 2023, Photography
Group Exhibition:
'Momentum,' Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, 2023
"In 15,000 years we have invented nothing."
- Pablo Picasso
Humans have been inspired by the movement of the horse since our earliest encounters. The oldest painting in the Lascaux Cave, the famous Dun Horse, was captured mid-stride 15,000 years ago. The earliest surviving photograph is a photographic copy made in 1825 by Nicéphore Niépce of a Flemish engraving featuring a man leading an energetic horse by the bridle. The impetus for the first motion picture was Leland Stanford’s desire to have his horses photographed at a gallop to prove what could not be ascertained by the human eye - that the four hooves of a horse leave the ground simultaneously. Photographer Eadweard Muybridge devised an apparatus of cameras, triggered by electrical signals, that managed to capture the movement of Stanford’s horse and prove his hunch. Titled ‘The Horse in Motion,’ Muybridge’s experiments permanently transformed visual culture.
Recent archaeological research has revealed that hearths were constructed in an intentional effort to use fire light to animate cave paintings in a manner that simulated movement. To the rhythm of the flickering flame horses danced across the wall. If the essence of photography lies in its apparent ability to freeze time it must be acknowledged that time, as in the infinite halving of space in Zeno's paradox, rejects such capture. And so every photograph ends up documenting its own impossibility. These photographs, featuring horses and their riders in Rodeo events, seek to represent the movement of the horse, and thus the image itself, in its becoming.