Catalogue: The circle of photographers Gustave Le Gray (1850-1860)

[Michael Wong]

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Modernism and Modernity - The circle of photographers Gustave Le Gray (1850-1860) - details of which can be found here.

The photograph was just ten years ago, when a generation of men and women under the umbrella of Gustave Le Gray, painter, chemist, "photographiste" inventor sets a new artistic language in complete break with the traditions inherited from Renaissance.

Accommodated in a large house phalanstery limits of Paris by a benevolent master, these practitioners of the new art lovers from the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie easy for most, design instinct irrevocable identity of the new medium. As in the construction of images in the treatment of the subject, their recognizable style allows the concept of school. In this period so fruitful beginnings of the Second Empire (1850-1860), well before the daring celebrated impressionism, photographers circle Le Gray will foreshadow the revolutionary vision of the next century.

They shed new light on the works of Henri Secq, Charles Adrien Tournachon or Negro, Anne and Marc Mondenard Pagneux, with access to public and private collections of the most prestigious, reveal a body recently discovered unpublished authors: the revelation of the production and Count Alphonse Delaunay Du Manoir disrupts long fixed hierarchy. Linking parts and unknown masterpieces found in 193 events can be held about one argued. A directory of authors, due to Vincent Rouby, brings an amount of new information that will identify future appearances ...

The authors, historians and critics of the photograph "primitive" by their texts thematic profiles, engage in uninhibited reading the origins of photography.