In downtown San Francisco

Copyright@Hans Durrer

Now when I walk in downtown San Francisco, where Muybridge walked and photographed, it sometimes seems that all the tourists are videotaping and all the locals are talking on cell phones. That is to say, the tourists will only experience the place later; the locals have entered a disembodied private space in public, a space they share with those who are not there and that shuts out those who are.

Rebecca Solnit: Rivers of Shadows. Eadweard Muybridge and the technological Wild West