Biography provided by the Patrick Montgomery Collection (Archive Farms)
 
Etienne Carjat (1828-1906) is best known for his photographic portraits of important 19th century French cultural figures including Charles Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola, Victor Hugo and many others, which were later made famous by their publication as woodburytypes in the popular mid-1870s publication Galerie Contemporaine. His photographs, sans the typical decoration of pillars and drapery used by other photographers, captured the spirit of his subjects by their dramatic postures and expressions. But lesser known are the caricatures of some of the same personalities that he created for the magazine Le Diogene, which he co-founded in 1856, and the review Le Boulevard, which he founded in 1861. His incisive eye was developed through the making of these pencil caricatures and the radical simplification of line and gesture became a trademark that transferred to his portrait photographs.