The Projectionists – Eadweard Muybridge and the Future Projections of the Moving Image

Eadweard Muybridge is among the seminal originators of the contemporary world’s visual form. Projectionists examines mostly unknown aspects of Muybridge’s work: his period as a touring projectionist who enthralled audiences with unprecedented moving-images and his creation of a moving-image auditorium—long before cinemas—in which to project his work at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. That auditorium was both a catastrophe and a vital precursor for the following century’s manias for projection. Based on new research into his travels, audiences, auditoria, and projectors, Projectionists explores Muybridge’s initiating role in moving-image projection and also maps his driving inspiration for subsequent filmmakers preoccupied with the volatile entity of projection, from 1890s Berlin to contemporary Japan, via further World’s Exposition events and cinemas’ overheated projection-boxes.