Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge
About Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge
Horse-drawn carriages and people on foot cross Leeds Bridge over the River Aire. Louis Le Prince filmed them in late October 1888 from a window above the bridge, with his son Adolphe beside him, on a single-lens camera loaded with paper film. About twenty frames survive. There is no story past the traffic.
Cast & crew
More about Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge
Le Prince used his second single-lens camera. Adolphe later wrote that the view was taken at 20 frames a second in poor light, and that he was there. The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (now the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford) holds photographic copies: a 1923 inventory of a few frames and a 1931 inventory, frames 110 to 129. A digitally stabilized loop from the museum runs about two seconds. Le Prince showed the frames at the Whitley factory. They were not put before a public audience at the time.
Themes
Background
Shot in Leeds in October 1888, years before the Lumière public shows of 1895. Le Prince disappeared in 1890, and the frames stayed with the family and later with the Bradford museum.
Making
Le Prince was testing the single-lens camera on a place where carts and walkers would keep moving. The paper film was Eastman's sensitized roll, not celluloid.
Look
Le Prince framed the bridge from an upper window with a single lens. The light was poor. What remains is about twenty frames of paper film, copied in the 1930s.
Music
Silent. No score was written for it.
Preservation
The original paper negative is not what museums project. The National Science and Media Museum holds 1930s photographic copies, including frames 110–129 from the 1931 inventory and a shorter set from the 1923 inventory.
Notes
- The surviving image is a 1930s photographic copy of the paper strip, not the original Kodak paper negative.
- Adolphe's 20-frames-a-second note and the museum's two-second loop do not match. Played at 10 frames a second the strip lasts two seconds. James Longley, who worked on the projector, reported a top speed of 7 frames a second.
- The window was at Hicks the ironmonger, looking down on the bridge.
- Roundhay Garden Scene, shot the same month at Oakwood Grange, is the other Leeds strip from 1888.
Scenes
- Carts and pedestrians pass on Leeds Bridge in a strip of about twenty frames.
Also available
- National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
