While convalescing in England after the crash, he took the suggestion of his physician to take up the new and burgeoning field of photography. True or not, the injury did lead Muybridge to become a photographer. Shimamura attributes some of Muybridge's subsequent creativity to this injury, arguing that it freed him from certain social constraints. Shimamura, a modern psychologist who speculates that Muybridge suffered significant damage to his orbitofrontal cortex. Many of these symptoms persisted in some form throughout his entire life. For months, he suffered from double vision, impaired sense of taste and smell, and confusion. However, in Texas, the stagecoach crashed, causing severe head injuries to Muybridge and killing one passenger. Louis, where he planned to buy a train ticket to New York City and then sail on to England as planned. But after missing the boat, Muybridge instead rode a stagecoach headed to St. In 1860, Muybridge booked passage to England in order to retrieve a number of antiquarian books for his shop. Muybridge also owned and operated a successful bookstore in San Francisco. During this time, he worked as a literary agent for the London Printing and Publishing Company.

He lived in New York City until 1855 when he moved to San Francisco. At the age of twenty, Muybridge relocated to the United States. When John died in 1843, Muybridge's mother, Susanna, took over the family business. Born Edward James Muggeridge in England in 1830, Muybridge was the son of grain and coal merchant John Muggeridge. Through the story of Muybridge's life, Solnit also examines broader technological trends during the second half of the nineteenth century, arguing that these trends are still felt today in the industries of the American West and California, particularly in Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

Doing so settled finally the then-heated debate over whether a horse ever has all four hooves off the ground when running. American author Rebecca Solnit’s biography, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (2003), chronicles the life and career of Eadweard Muybridge, a nineteenth-century English-American photographer most famous for capturing the gait of a horse using motion capture photography.

River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit