Lee Gallery
19th Century French Photographs by Edouard Baldus
(September 3 - October 31, 2007)
Photographers included:
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Edouard Baldus achieved veneration as a master photographer in France during the mid 19th century. Known for his large negatives (sometimes as large as 10” x 14”) and combination of negatives to produce large panoramas, as well as his pristine work with paper negatives, Baldus was a forerunner of accomplishment in the field.
Little is know of the first twenty-five years of his life but his birth in Prussia in 1813, and a short stint as an artillery officer in the Prussian army. Baldus traveled the world while pursuing a career as a portrait painter and would eventually end up in Paris in 1838 to study painting. After many failed attempts to enter his paintings into the Paris Salon, Baldus, along with many others in France at the time, began to pursue paper photography. Paper photography, not the daguerreotype, sparked his interest because of experimentation that was yet to be done with the medium, and because of its much stronger connection with the graphic arts.
Baldus left painting altogether to study photographic chemistry in 1849. He worked to develop his own variation of the paper negative, soaked in a light sensitive gelatin infused coating. He dreamt of new uses for photography and successfully marketed them to the government, industry, and the public. His career exploded in 1851 when, as one of the founding members of the Societe Heliographique, he was asked to be involved in the Mission Heliographique: a government project commissioned by the Historic Monument Commission. The project would involve Baldus and five others (including Gustave Le Gray and Hippolyte Bayard) photographing France’s architecture with a specific emphasis on historic buildings in need of restoration. It was this task that would win him government support for his next undertaking, “Les Villes de France Photographies”, a series of architectural photographs of Paris executed to recreate an interest in the country’s history. This project would make Baldus one of the most influential photographers of the time, and lead him to new opportunities that would further his career and his fame.
In 1855, Baldus was asked by architect Hector Lafuel to archive the construction of the new Louvre museum. This series of photographs served a practical function as it kept record of the work site, keeping track of important models and stone carvings used in the construction, but it also served to elevate archival material as a new form of art. The Emperor gave this work, presented in Albums of four volumes each, as gifts to the government ministers, reigning monarchs, and imperial families of Europe.
In the same year, Baron James de Rothschild, a banker, industrialist and president of the Chemin de fer du Nord (Northern Railway) asked Baldus to document Queen Victoria of England’s railroad journey through France from Paris to Boulogne-sur-Mer. These albums, which were presented to the Queen as a gift, were not only considered the most beautiful French photographic albums of the 19th century, but also proved to be an important political and economical move with the ties it created between France and England.
Baldus’ final major project was his second round of work with the French Railway in 1861. This project documented the new Chemins de fer de Paris a Lyon et a la Mediterranee, the southern portion of the French railway. The sixty-nine photographs would artistically tie the bold geometric patters of the railroad with the classically historical architecture and beautiful landscapes of the French countryside. This in turn served to validate modern industry and technological progress in France, a historically grounded nation.
Baldus found critical recognition with these three major projects. He added to his remarkable body of work by documenting the damage from the 1856 flooding of Lyon, Avignon and Tarascon, creating an archive of the catastrophic damage praised for it’s depiction of architectural destruction void of emotion, something interesting because of its rarity at the time. His innovation, artistic practicality, eye for the beauty in industry and architecture, and the role he played in French governmental affairs as an artist makes him one of the most prized and prominent photographers of the 19th century.
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