First Filmed Kiss - Plate 444

The Kiss, like most of the image sequences in the Muybride Online archive, was produced some time between 1872 and 1885, significantly before the invention of the motion picture camera. It was created using banks of still cameras firing in sequence. Essentially every one of Muybridge’s plates is a film first. The fact that this kiss is so different from the previous contenders for first filmed kiss will shock some and I hope intrigue many more. It raises questions about our understanding of the history of human sexuality, as well as the history of film. The Kiss, like many of the photographic series Muybridge created, was intended to inform the scientific and artistic understanding of human motion. To that end, many of these photos are of minimally clad or unclothed people engaged in everyday activities such as walking or working. He may have chosen to photograph the kiss with two women because in the context of Victorian culture this was more likely to be seen as innocent. For this reason many of Muybridge’s photos showing interactions between what might be expected to be men and women use women for both roles.
We believe Muybridge's Plate 444 was the first time that a kiss was documented over time through photography and that this represents the first kiss ever filmed. We made our first kiss film loop from the top row of eight images.
To many modern eyes this plate and others like it read as homo-erotic. It would not have been read so in Muybridges time. While the Victorians were extremely sexually prudish by modern standards and commonly considered male homosexuality a serious threat to their society they believed women had little or no sex drive. Therefore the possibility of lesbianism was commonly ignored. Because of Victorian sexual taboos Muybridge was not able to photograph men and women naked together and was only able to publish images of naked men together engaging in sports or work. Because he was free to show women naked together he used female models when he wanted to show two people engaging in ordinary activities. In many plates he had one of the women assume a typically male role and these are the plates which today we tend to perceive as homo-erotic.