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.

BRASSAÏ (Gyula Halasz) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)

Tonnerre sur Paris (Lightning over Paris), negative, circa 1938

Gelatin silver print, circa 1960

29.3 x 23.0 cm

After moving to Paris in 1924, Gyula Halász (1899-1984) renamed himself Brassaï after his hometown of Brasso, Hungary. He took up photography around 1929 on the advice of fellow Hungarian André Kertész. His 1930s photographs, such as the gelatin silver print Lightning over Paris, evoke the nocturnal atmosphere and the artist’s fascination with the French capital. The 1933 publication of Paris de nuit secured Brassaï’s international reputation. He described his unscientific yet practical method of making nighttime exposures of Paris: “To gauge my shutter time, I would smoke cigarettes-a Gauloise for a certain light, a Boyard if it was darker. The policemen on patrol wondered what kind of crime I was in the midst of committing. They had never seen anyone take pictures at night."

Count Olympe Aguado (French, 1827-1895)

Large Oak, Bois de Boulogne, circa 1855

Poitevin process photolithograph

38.6 x 28.7 cm

Photographing in the dead of winter, Aguado studied the sinuous details of the leafless oak tree set against the saplings and underbrush in the Bois de Boulogne. Descended from a noble Spanish family, Count Olympio-Clémente Aguado was one of several early photographers who learned the basics of photography from Gustave Le Gray. He was known for his technical skills and the use of numerous photographic processes. In 1854 Aguado was a founding member of the Sociéte française de photographe.

In 1855, the chemist, photographer and civil engineer, Alphonse Louis Poitevin (French, 1819-1882) patented a photolithographic process which was able to photosensitize a lithographic stone. He has been described as “one of the great, unheralded figures in photography.” Poitevin’s photomechanical process was so commercially successful that he sold his patent in 1857 to Lemercier, one of the largest printing houses in France.

Louis-Emile Durandelle (French, 1839-1917)

Masques du vestibule circulaire, from "Le Nouvel Opéra de Paris, Sculpture Ornamentale," 1876

Albumen print from a collodion negative

21.2 x 27.8 cm

Louis-Emile Durandelle was one of the most accomplished architectural photographers during the 19th century. His best known body of work is the group of photographs of the construction of the Paris Opéra and its sculptural ornaments and decorations in the 1860s. Charles Garnier won the commission to design the Opéra house in 1861, during France’s Second Empire, a period of rapid urban growth and opulent construction. Garnier’s Opéra is today considered one of the best and most successful of many excellent buildings erected during that period. Durandelle was hired to photograph each detail of the building before it was lifted into place. While his job was ostensibly mundane and simply documentary, his pictures of the ornament and decorations are anything but. Durandelle often isolated the sparkling white marble or rich bronze pieces against a cloth backdrop, according them each distinction and majesty before they became part of a carefully organized and orchestrated program on the façade or in the interior.

John Beasley Greene (American, born in France, 1832-1856)

Rooftops, Paris, 1852-1853, or earlier

Waxed paper negative

24.3 x 31.2 cm

Greene's rooftop images were made during his formative period as a student of Gustave Le Gray, inventor of the waxed paper negative. It's not unlikely that while Greene sharpened his skills in lighting and composition photographing vegetables and the small plaster cast of the Venus de Milo, his eye was drawn to the sculptural and monumental forms suggested by nearby rooftops such as these.

Hippolyte Louis Fizeau (French, 1819-1896)

Saint-Sulpice, Paris, early 1840s

Daguerreian engraving

7.5 x 10.0 cm

This impressively detailed early view was likely taken from Fizeau's rooftop at 17 rue du Cherche-Midi, a few streets away from Saint-Sulpice.

NADAR (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)

Catacombs of Paris “The mannequin’s siesta," 1862

Albumen print

24.7 x 19.0 cm

Nadar had experimented with photography by artificial light since 1859, working with engineer Victor Serrin (1825-1905), inventor of an electric regulator able to adjust the bright, if toxic, lights of the first Bunsen batteries. Both men presented their experiments in the salons of the Cercle de la Presse Scientifique, with Nadar obtaining a patent for his lighting innovation in 1861. Ernest Lamé-Fleury, a mining engineer, quarry inspector and the person responsible for the Paris catacombs, invited Nadar in 1861 to document the transfer and arrangement of bones from the old Parisian cemeteries to abandoned underground quarries, begun for hygienic reasons at the end of the eighteenth century, and continuing through Haussmann's renovation and urbanization of the city during the Second Empire. Lamé-Fleury gave Nadar exclusive access to the catacombs and put his staff at Nadar's disposal. In return, Nadar himself met the costs of the work and made gifts of several albums of the photographs. Exposure times, with spotlights or cables visible in some images, were as long as eighteen minutes according to Nadar, who used mannequins dressed as laborers as models in his tableaux.

Nadar's series of photographs of the Paris catacombs are among the most striking images obtained using the then new technology and the first to be made underground.

NADAR (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)

Catacombs of Paris “Hallucinations of shadow, light and collodion," 1862

Albumen print

23.0 x 19.0 cm

Nadar had experimented with photographing by artificial light since 1859, working with engineer Victor Serrin, inventor of the first Bunsen batteries. Both men presented their experiments in the salons of the Cercle de la Presse Scientifique; Nadar obtained a patent for his lighting innovation in 1861. Nadar was invited that year to document the transfer and arrangement of bones from the old Parisian cemeteries to abandoned underground quarries during Haussmann's renovation of the city. He was given exclusive access to the catacombs and a staff. In return, Nadar met the costs of the work and made official gifts of several albums of the photographs. Exposure times, with spotlights visible in some images, were as long as eighteen minutes according to Nadar, who occasionally used mannequins as models in his tableaux. Nadar's series of Paris catacomb photographs are among the most striking images obtained using the then new technology and the first to be made underground. The ghost-like effect of the collodion imperfections in the glass negative of “Hallucinations of shadow, light and collodion” lend to the haunting impression of this scene.

NADAR (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)

Sewers of Paris “Part of the gallery converted into a wagon garage,” 1865

Albumen print

25.0 x 19.1 cm

The modernization of the sewers in Paris began in 1855 under the direction of Eugène Belgrand, chief engineer in charge of Paris water and sewer services, as part of Haussman's urbanization of the city. Nadar's pioneering underground photography, of which the sewer series is an important early example, presented unique challenges requiring the use of artificial lighting and flash photography. Lengthy exposure times warranted the utilization of mannequins to animate certain scenes and provide a sense of scale.

Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879)

"Candélabre du pont de la Concorde," 1864-1870

Albumen print from a collodion negative

36.2 x 24.7 cm

Charles Marville was commissioned in the 1860s to produce a series of views of the old streets and buildings of Paris before their destruction in the wake of Haussmann’s transformation of the city during the Second Empire. By the 1870s he was documenting the new streetlamps, examples of the emergence of Paris as a city of luxury, modernity, and light. The albumen print of “Candélabre du pont de la Concorde” is a fine example of the clarity and close attentiveness to detail and structure Marville achieves in his elegantly composed lamppost pictures.