Points of View

Eadweard Muybridge, father of cinema (and murderer)

'The man who stopped time: Eadweard Muybridge – pioneer photographer, father of cinema and murderer' ...is the title of what promises to be a fascinating talk at the Library on Monday 1 February.

English-born Muybridge's innovative work in capturing motion through a series of photographs was a milestone on the road to motion pictures. He's featured in our Points of View virtual exhibition.

Speaking will be Brian Clegg, author of a recent biography of Muybridge. You'll also be able to see animations of Muybridge's photographic sequences made by Marek Pytel. Muybridge himself was not a filmmaker, but his work seems to magically capture the point at which still photography 'wills itself into motion' - in the words of my colleague Luke McKernan.

Book now to hear this astounding story. Oh, and Muybridge got off with 'justifiable homocide'.

London 1870s and now - 12: St John's Gate, Clerkenwell

This is the 12th in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s with the same view today.

Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

It shows St John's Gate, Clerkenwell, a little north of Smithfield market. It was the main gateway to the Priory of Saint John of Jerusalem, founded in the 12th century by the Norman Knight Jorden de Briset. It now houses the Order of Saint John Museum.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about it in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The whole of the buildings of the Priory were destroyed by the rebels of Kent and Essex in 1381, in a fire that lasted seven days. Successive priors carried on the work of reinstatement, but it was only in 1504 that Prior Docwra completed the Gate-house shown in the photograph, which formed the great south entrance to the Priory."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. Just to the left is a fine pub, the Jerusalem Tavern, perhaps London's most authentic faux-historic pub.

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London 1870s and now - 11: Cheapside

This is the 11th in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

It shows the south side of Cheapside - specifically, the block with No. 73, the main building in the picture.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about it in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "This house is still known as The Old Mansion House." Cheapside was the chief market place of medieval London, mentioned by Chaucer, and in the middle of the 19th century it was still a bustling shopping centre.

Below it is the nearest view you can have today as it appeared in August 2009. Cheapside today is unrecognisable as the historic shopping dynamo: a combination of Luftwaffe bombs and unsympathetic redevelopment has made it a rather bland avenue of faceless office blocks and retail brands. The thoroughfare, while still noisy, cannot now claim to be "the busiest in the world" as its Victorian forerunner did.

The inhabitant of Dixon's time would recognise nothing of Cheapside now - except for Bow Church just up the road, the zero-point of Cockney London restored to its Wren-era appearance from wartime rubble.

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Video on Guardian website

Just out today is a great piece by Andrew Dickson, Guardian Arts Unlimited Editor: a video introduction to the Points of View exhibition on their website (3 min, 42 sec).

'Andrew Dickson goes in search of photography's early days'... The video features an interview with exhibition curator John Falconer.

London 1870s and now - 10: St Giles, Cripplegate

This is the tenth in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today. Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

It shows how much the area surrounding the church of St Giles, Cripplegate - the Barbican - has changed.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about it in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The photograph shows the tower of the Church, the body of which, on the side of the street, is masked by picturesque houses. The Church contains a modern bust of Milton, who was buried here. In the churchyard, at one time, as may be seen by Archer's Vestiges, very picturesque, but now spoilt by the erection around it of great warehouses, is a bastion, one of the few remaining fragments of London Wall."

The church was reduced to ruins during an air raid in World War II and later rebuilt by Godfrey Allen as the parish church of the 1980s Barbican development, whose modern concrete blocks now crowd the church (which still contains that Milton bust).

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. The picturesque Victorian terrace is long gone, obliterated by German bombs. It is impossible to stand exactly in Dixon's footprints - the spot he photographed from is now a lake. On the ashes of the old Fore St houses are now a girl's school and a residential block. The closest you can come to replicating his view is from the Art section of the excellent Barbican public library.

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Ordinary-light blog

Among recent reviews of 'Points of View' is this from www.ordinary-light.com/blog

'The image which really clinched the “best of show award” for me, was an image of a cochlea ear bone from an infant by J. Albert, 1866. The image has a strange abstract mandrake root shape to it and it is not until one reads the title that one can A) understand what it is and B) understand the complexity of the person it came from before being brought to the camera. It is a superb image and offers the viewer confusion, both visual and mental, but also intrigues and radiates further when its description is given. These very qualities make photography so very appealing.'

Unfortunately this isn't in our online gallery, but you can see other 'scientific' photographs in the appropriate thematic section.

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London 1870s and now - 9: Brewer St, Soho

This is the ninth in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

It shows the corner of Brewer St and Lower James St, Soho, in the warren of backstreets just north-west of Piccadilly Circus.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the building in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The photograph shows an old-fashioned shop, dated early eighteenth century, of a style very few examples of which are now left. Brewer Street was built about 1680, Soho being then, as it long remained, a fashionable part of the town."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. The 18th-century front is long gone, and the shop which apparently used to sell technical equipment is now, like so many London locations with a heavy footfall, a coffee shop. (The Yellow Pages list nearly 1,900 in London.)

The preponderance of such places in the capital is nothing new: the first London coffee shop opened in 1652, and a decade later there were over 80. One coffee shop, which started in 1688, proved a useful meeting place for merchants dealing in marine insurance, and subsequently became Lloyd's of London.

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