Plate Number 241. Placing a chair, sitting and reading 1887

Eadweard Muybridge made this photographic plate of a woman placing a chair, sitting, and reading at the end of the 19th century. It's part of a larger project, *Animal Locomotion*, that aimed to capture and analyze the movement of humans and animals. What we see is the result of photographic techniques combined with a scientific impulse and the cultural mores of the time. Muybridge was commissioned to undertake this project by the University of Pennsylvania. The scientist’s claim to objectivity depended on an ability to see things as they really were. But how objective can we really be? What is revealed about social class in this work, for example, in the implicit suggestion of a life of leisure? The historian can show how “science” and “objectivity” are always dependent on social and institutional contexts. By consulting period sources, cultural histories, and institutional records, we can unpack the complex meanings embedded in this image.