1393
TISSANDIER, GASTON (1843–1899)
It was as a scientifi c scholar, a public educator and
writer, and an enthusiast for new inventions that Gaston
Tissandier’s major contribution to photography in the
nineteenth century was made. His formative infl uences
were in science, journalism and ballooning. Having
completed studies at the Lycée Bonaparte, Tissandier
studied in the chemistry laboratory of P.P. Dehérain
at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, Paris, before
taking courses at the Sorbonne and the Collège de
France. By the time he was only twenty-one (1864),
he became Director of the Laboratoire d’essais et
d’analyses chimique de l’Union nationale. Within three
years he co-authored, with Dehérain, the 4-volumed
Elements of Chemistry (Hachette, 1867–70) and was
commissioned by Hachette to write four books for the
series Bibliothèque des Merveilles (Library of Marvels),
beginning in 1867 with l’Eau (Water) and progressing
through to 1874 with monographs on Coal, Fossils and
Photography. The fi rst of these was certainly indebted
to Dehérain, but the fourth in the series, Les Merveilles
de la photographie (Handbook and History of Pho-
tography (1878)), refl ected the young scholar’s own
interests. Tissandier continued to write many books on
science, including those on dust particles in the upper
atmosphere and on the construction of electrostatic
dirigible balloons.
If science was his fi rst love, writing was a close
second. Aged twenty-three he began contributing to Ed-
ouard Charton’s illustrated weekly on the arts, literature,
history and sciences, Magasin Pittoresque (established
1833 to “instruct and moralise the new generations”),
awakening in the young man a lifelong belief in edu-
cation through the popular press. In 1873 Tissandier
established his own illustrated scientifi c journal, La
Nature, attracting the publishing support of Hachette
after the fi rst year. Tissandier wrote innumerable ar-
ticles on all branches of the sciences for this journal,
and as editor was able to attract the support of leading
scientists. Much of the material that fi rst came to light
in La Nature was collated and expanded into one of his
most infl uential tomes, Les Récréations scientifi ques
(1880), which presented science as knowledge attained
through wonder and fun-fi lled experiments, most of
them amenable to the home enthusiast. As a fl uent writer
and eloquent public lecturer, many of his books went
into multiple, revised editions, and were translated into
many languages.
A third formative infl uence was ballooning. Having
made his début ascension on 16 August 1868, Tissandier
went on to make many aerial voyages. Most of his
ascensions were to further meteorological knowledge
(e.g. analysing dust particles in the upper atmosphere)
and the science of aeronautics (leading he and his archi-
tect brother and lifelong companion, Albert, to devise
electric and propeller-driven balloons). Indeed, it is as
a balloonist that Tissandier is now best known.
To these formative infl uences should be added patrio-
tism, for Tissandier’s ballooning expeditions over enemy
lines during the Siege of Paris by Germany (1870–71)
was not only rewarded with his being made a chevalier
of the Legion d’honneur on 15 November 1872, but
predisposed him to embrace the philosophy of the
newly-formed French Association for the Advancement
of Science which stood ‘for country and for science.’
According to his biographer, Le Cholleux, La Nature
and his many other publications were driven by a desire
to enhance the quality of science in France.
Tissandier’s interest in photography is best revealed
in three texts, Les Merveilles de la Photographie (1874);
segments in Récréations (1880); and La Photographie
en ballon (1886).His photography has its roots as much
in popular entertainments of illusionism, as in painstak-
ing scientifi c experimentation. ‘Admirable photographs,’
he argued in Photographie, refl ect the ‘skill of the physi-
cian and the taste of the artist,’ and have ‘colour, relief,
delicacy and truth,’ their ‘rigorous precision’ making
them invaluable to the artist, architect, archaeologist,
geographer, explorer, and those maintaining criminal
and juridical archives. For Tissandier, aerial panoramas
could assist surveying as much as military reconnais-
sance. Indeed, Photographie en ballon includes an
albumen print frontispiece of the port of the Hôtel de
Ville, Paris, ‘taken at 600m. altitude by messieurs Gas-
ton Tissandier and Jacques Ducom,’ where the strongly
intersecting diagonals of streets and bridges, remarkably
modernist in composition, are delineated on a transpar-
ent overlay, to demonstrate its value as a map. This and
other crisp aerial images, in fact taken by Ducom, were
indebted to successful efforts to minimise shudder in
the basket, and the use of M. Bacard’s plates enabling
exposures at 1/50 sec. He also collaborated with Paul
Nadar, who photographed Versailles and Sevres from
800m. Tissandier wrote lucidly of the history, chemical
processes and applications of photography. His enthu-
siasm for ‘that sublime and benefi cent art’ rested on
the camera’s ability to accurately reproduce the human
face, distant lands, and all the sciences from laboratory-
based micrography to astronomy. Writing in a clear and
accessible narrative style, often complemented by the
inclusion of abundant images, his books and articles
were written to inform and enthral young and old.
Tissandier was an amateur photographer, serving
at various times as president and vice-president of the
Société d’excursions des amateurs de photographie
(founded 1887). He was a member of the Société
française photographie, as well as societies of aerial
navigation, meteorology, chemistry, and served on
government commissions of military aerostations and
civil aeronautics.