Best known for his contribution to the development of the motion picture, Eadweard Muybridge (1830 1904) was a pioneering photographer during his lifetime. Alongside his remarkable photographic achievements, his personal life was riddled with melodrama including a near-fatal stagecoach accident and a betrayal by his wife that ended with Muybridge being tried for the murder of her lover. Marta Braun s revealing biography traces the sensational events of Muybridge s life and his personal reinventions as artist, photographer, researcher, and showman.

In the 1870s, Muybridge s...