Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880)
Le tailleur de pierre, summer 1853
Salt print from a collodion on glass negative
9.9 cm tondo
Trained as a painter, Charles Nègre applied expertise in formal composition acquired in the painting studio of Paul Delaroche to the medium of photography. Le tailleur de pierre shows Nègre’s approach to genre photography, a subject for which he was renowned. By using soft focus in the background and bright illumination at the center, Nègre draws the eye toward the stonecutter’s gesture, frozen at a precise moment of action. Without using a fraction-of-a-second exposure, the artist created, rather than captured, what a split second would look like as a photograph. In spite of its instantaneous appearance, this is a posed picture, made with a three second exposure. Even in its diminutive size, this salt print trimmed to a tondo conveys Nègre’s argument for photography’s importance in the representation of modern life.