Étienne-Jules Marey Chronophotographe

Text by Michel Frizot.

Professor of physiology, Étienne-Jules Marey developed a photographic concept intended to enable the study of movement: chronophotography, which broke movement down into isolated instants, revealing the time-space relationship movement implies, by imprinting several rapidly shot frames in a single picture. His strictly scientific goals led him to obtain unprecedented, upsetting and unusual images where time appears to be both frozen and multiplied, and the most ordinary movements of a man, a horse or a bird take on extraordinary, ghostly forms. Michel Frizot tackles an explanation of that concept here as he analyzes the inventor’s intuitions and celebrates the fascinating power his photographs still exert over us.