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SABATIER-BLOT, JEAN-BAPTISTE
Industry. His production was rewarded, even though
the jury mentioned that the effects of light were too
complicated, which harmed the simplicity and the clar-
ity of the images.
The last exposition in which he seemed to have taken
part was that of the Hook Deluxe hotel of 1851 where he
presented only one portrait. The same year, he became
a member of the new Société heliographique. At the
time when the technique of collodion was established,
his name was rarely mentioned: three years later, he ap-
peared among the fi rst members of the Société française
de photographie although he did not take part thereafter
in any of its expositions. He seemed nevertheless to
continue to express interest in the photographic me-
dium, and its technical aspects in particular. In 1857 he
acquired a patent for an instrument that was easier to
manipulate as it was “so simple that one hour is enough
to learn photography.” Then in 1863, he developed an-
other apparatus to operate in the open air. Moving once
again, his studio from to 1861 was located at 25 rue
Neuve des Bons Enfants (25 street Neuve of the Good
Children), and then from 1863 to 1871, at Valois 37. He
continued to make portraits, in particular calling cards,
and ended his activity at the beginning of the 1870s.
He died in 1881.
Since his large body of work is very scattered
today, the most substantial collection consists of a
little less than thirty plates belonging to the George
Eastman house in Rocheste. These images came from
the collection of Gabriel Cromer, a member of family
of Sabatier-Blot’s daughter who married, in 1865, to
another photographer, Victor Laisné. With the study
of this collection, it appears that the best of his work
was carried out in margin of his commercial activities
such as a portrait of the chemist Jean-Baptist Dumas,
probably from 1849–1850, and the many portraits,
sometimes with the format full plate, which he created
of his daughter and his wife starting from the middle
of the 1840s. Sticking more to the expression and the
character of his models than with their social status,
these images are among the greatest successes of the
portrait to the French daguerreotype portraits.
Quentin Bajac
Further Readings
Auer, Michèle, and Michel Auer, Encyclopédie internationale
des photographes de 1839 à nos jours, Hermance, éditions
Camera Obscura.
Buerger, Janet E., French Daguerreotypes, The University of
Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1989.
Mac Cauley, Anne , Industrial Madness, Commercial Photogra-
phy in Paris, 1848–1871, Yale University Press, New Haven
and London, 1994.
SACHÉ, ALFRED (c. 1853–1885)
India-based photographerCommercial photographer, eldest son of John Edward
Saché by his fi rst wife, Alfred joined his father’s pho-
tographic studio at Nainital in 1872, where he worked
as an assistant till 1874. Working on a seasonal basis,
he also opened his own premises in Benares in 1874,
which he managed for one season till March 1875. The
following month, he established another studio in the
hill station of Kasauli, where he also became agent for
the sale of his father’s photographs. Between 1876 and
1881, Alfred’s professional activity remains uncertain;
the birth of his fi rst child in March 1876 in Amballa
and his second child in 1880 in Lahore suggests he
may have worked as a photographer in both cities. In
1881, he opened a studio in Dalhousie, which he ran
for a few years before traveling to Lahore again, where
he possibly established the fi rm A. Saché & Co before
he died in 1885. The fi rm continued till 1895, possibly
run by his half brother John, who was John Edward
Saché’s son by his second wife Annie, and managed a
studio in Lahore between 1886 and 1895. From 1896,
the business A. Saché & Co was renamed Saché & Co
and remained in activity till 1900.
Stephanie RoySACHÉ, JOHN EDWARD (1824–1882)
Prussian-born, Indian photographer and studio
ownerCommercial photographer, born in Prussia as Johann
Edvart Zachert, Saché arrived in Calcutta from the Unit-
ed States in late 1864, and entered into partnership with
W. F. Westfi eld. Member of the Bengal Photographic
Society, the fi rm Saché & Westfi eld won the silver and
bronze medals at the annual exhibition of the Society,
respectively in 1865 and 1866. While in partnership
with Westfi eld, Saché opened his own independent
studio at Nainital in 1867. He subsequently went into
a brief partnership with a Mr J. Murray in Bombay in- The same year, he made an expedition into the
Himalayas, following Samuel Bourne’s example. By
1870, Saché had ended his association with Westfi eld
and concentrated on the running of season-based studios
until his death in 1882: Mussoorie (from 1876) and
Nainital during the hot months, Lucknow (from 1871)
during the cooler months. In 1873–74, Saché made a
series of views of Kashmir, which was to be the last
group of topographical images he produced. Between
1874 and 1876, additional seasonal studios were opened
in Meerut, Cawnpore and Benares, the latest being