1497
for an assessment of her abilities with a camera. Those
that have been preserved are housed in the Auckland
Institute and Museum. A study of these proves that
she was capable of a lighter mode, photographing her
workmates and friends in risqué situations, drinking
and smoking in the company of men! There is also
a very historically important reportage series on the
funeral of the important Maori Chief Rewi Maniapoto,
including a morte study.
William Main
WILLÈME, FRANÇOIS (1830–1905)
Draughtsman, painter, and sculptor (he made models
for the bronze manufacturers of art), François Willème
also practiced photography. His various experiments
gave him the idea of a new process, the photosculpture,
which he developed beginning in 1859, and for which
he registered several patents. The photosculpture con-
sisted of producing a statue, a statuette, or a bust start-
ing from a series of photographic negatives taken of a
live person or a model in sculpture in the round. This
involved a device that was comprised, as installed in a
salon, of a circular platform ten meters in diameter, lit
by a canopy; on the other side of the circular wall, in
a corridor, were laid out 24 cameras (the lenses were
concealed by carved busts), which made it possible
to photograph the model at the same time from every
angle possible (the shutters were connected and could be
opened and closed at the same time). In the workshops,
the negatives were then projected in a “lampascope” on
a translucent screen, increased to the desired size; on
the back of the screen, a workman traced the silhouette
with a point fi xed at a pantograph; at the other end, the
pantograph was equipped with a knife which cut out the
silhouette in a block of clay, poised on a revolving base;
after each layout, the resulting image was projected and
translated in the same way into three dimensions, and so
on until the sum of the profi les was obtained. A sculptor
completed molding and perfecting the image; the statue
could then be cast. The resemblance was guaranteed,
with proportions exact.
In 1861, François Moigno spoke about the process
in his Cosmos review, but it was only in 1863 that the
invention was made known to a larger audience. The
Société générale de photosculpture was formed that
year thanks to capital brought by different fi nanciers;
the fi rst establishment opened on boulevard de l’Etoile,
in a large building crowned with a cupola of glass, and
with the facade decorated with statuettes; two years
later, a branch opened on the boulevard des Italiens.
To launch his company, Willème accepted the support
of the press and writers. Willème’s businesses were
attended by the good company of the Second Empire,
beginning with the imperial couple and its entourage,
the personalities of the artistic and literary world, as
well as society women. The vogue of photosculpture
exceeded the French borders: similar establishments
opened in London (Antoine Claudet introduced the
process in England by proposing some improvements,
and showed examples in 1864) and in the United States
(branch opened in 1866 in New York by Huston and
Kurtz). Willème went to Madrid to make the portraits
of the royal family of Spain.
Willème showed specimens of photosculpture to the
Société française de photographie in 1863 and 1864
(with his associate De Marnyac), and at the World Fair
of Vienna in 1864, and to the exposition of the central
Union of arts in Paris in 1865. Each time he had a
great public success. The judgments of critics were
divided. Ernest Lacan, always enthusiastic, compared
a bust in terra-cotta with the “more charming oeuvres
of the XVIIIe century” (Monitor of Photography, Sep-
tember 15, 1865), whereas Theodore Pelloquet spoke
about “stiff fi gurines, gauche, of a soft design” and
exclaimed: “All that is extremely ugly, all that feels
mechanical and misses character and of life” (Time,
August 13, 1865).
At the Exposition Universelle of 1867, Willème had
a share of a house in the park. But the passion for pho-
tosculpture had already reached its end and the company
collapsed; in 1868, Willème closed his workshops and
returned to live in his native area of Sedan.
Even if it were transitory, the glory of Willème and
his invention attests to the vogue of the photographic
portrait under the Second Empire and of the inventive-
ness of the medium of photography; it also testifi es
to the entrepreneurship which could animate an even
obscure artist, since he proposed a new idea and had
effective support, in particular that of the press, which
represented a true power then.
If it seems an invention without future, even like a
salon entertainment for an avid society to contemplate
its image, the photosculpture had at least the ambition
to put sculpture, noble art, within the range of more
modest purses; the duration of the sittings were short,
the execution was fast and reduced the total cost. In
that, it falls under the vast movement in favour of the
industrial arts; but Willème undoubtedly failed insofar
as there was never a true market for photosculpture,
the victim of the competition of the more accessible
photographic portrait, the format calling card. In ad-
dition to the portrait, Willème also made attempts at
reproductions of old sculptures. The specimens of
photosculpture now preserved are in plaster: portraits
of personalities or unknown, adults and children
(Rochester: collection Gabriel Cromer, SFP, Comp-
iegne, Museum of decorative Arts, Museum of Arts
and Trades).
Helene Bocard