Approved biography
Courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK)
 
Gustave Le Gray had high aesthetic ambitions for photography, creating virtuoso images and in particular dramatic seascapes. Previous photographers had found it difficult to capture skies, because of the different exposures needed to get detail in the sea and the sky. Le Gray solved this by using two different negatives.Le Gray was also one of the first to claim that photographs could be appreciated as works of art in their own right.
 
This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is included here with permission.
 
Wikipedia
 
Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray (French: [ʒɑ̃ batist ɡystav lə gʁɛ]; 30 August 1820 - 30 July 1884) was a French painter, draughtsman, sculptor, print-maker, and photographer. He has been called "the most important French photographer of the nineteenth century" because of his technical innovations, his instruction of other noted photographers, and "the extraordinary imagination he brought to picture making." He was an important contributor to the development of the wax paper negative.