Iron Horses: Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge, and the Industrialised Eye.

This essay analyses Stanford's sponsorship of Muybridge's early instantaneous photographs of animals in motion in the context of the United States' complex and troubled process of mechanisation during the late nineteenth century. In short, I contend that the railroad executive Stanford and his advocates staged and disseminated these photographs in order to consolidate, promote, and naturalise the developments of industrial capitalism. The railroad executive proffered these experiments as evidence of his commitment to the public good, as clear benefits for both the economy in general and the art community in particular, and as exemplars of the new industrial order. At the same time, many contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic responded to these photographs by renewing heated, ongoing controversies over the role and nature of technology, industrialism, and corporate plutocrats like Stanford. Antagonists often rejected the stills' highly touted social utility and Stanford's proclaimed munificence. But because these were photographs, the debate centred on distinct modes and philosophies of visual production and consumption. The Muybridge archive, and responses thereto, thus marked an important moment when two conceptual systems of viewership collided. At stake, ultimately, was the ability to lay claim to social authority through the very practice of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]