| Alexandre (Brussels) Instantaneous Photographs 1888, 18 August Magazine page Google Books LL/43142 Scientific American Supplement, No.659, August 18, 1888, p.10521
Instantaneous Photographs. Both amateurs and professionals are daily obtaining more and more interesting results in measure as the sensitiveness of gelatino bromide of silver increases and the rapidity of shutters augments. We often receive curious specimens of instantaneous photographs, and we have already reproduced several of them. We cannot resist the pleasure of reproducing on the present occasion two very successful photographs taken by a skillful operator of Brussels, Mr. Alexandre. They represent a horse and his rider leaping over an improvised barrier. These photographs, which are very clean as regards execution, are worthy of examination from an artistic standpoint. One of them (Fig. 1) is exceedingly effective as regards design. The horse, with his legs drawn up, is full of movement, and the gesture of the rider raising his whip is exceedingly happy. A painter might get inspiration from this picture. The second photograph (Fig. 2), on the contrary, gives one of those attitudes produced by motions that our eye does not perceive, and which seems to us to be wanting in naturalness. The horse's tail, which is very stiff, stands upright in the air, and the two fore legs, absolutely straight, produce an effect that would not seem natural did we not know that we have before our eyes a reproduction of nature itself. Instantaneous photography is always very curious to study from an aesthetic standpoint.
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