137
name is commemorated to this day with a suburb called
Beerscourt in the city of Hamilton.
William Main
BEHLES, EDMUND (1841–1921)
Italian photographer and studio owner
Edmund Behles was born in Stuttgart on 21st July 1841.
He was married to Luisa Fetzer. First he worked as a
photographer in Rome with Giorgio Sommer from1859
to 1860, becoming the most brilliant and qualifi ed
photographer in Sommer’s firm. Their association
lasted until about 1866. During this period they often
sold photographs under the name of either of them
without distinction or with both their names together.
This makes the attribution of these early photographs
very diffi cult. During their collaboration, Behles and
Sommer travelled all over Italy and became famous for
their photographic views of important monuments and
landscapes in enlarged and stereoscopic prints. When
Sommer went to Naples, Behles remained in Rome
and worked independently until 1878 in Via Mario de’
Fiori, 28. He also had a shop in Via del Corso, 196. He
became well known for portraits, while continuing to
take photographs of landscapes and historical sites. He
won prizes at international exhibitions with Sommer
(Dublin 1865), with whom he was honoured by Vittorio
Emanuele II as Royal Photographer (1865). He also won
prizes on his own (Paris 1867; Vienna 1873), continued
his activity as a photographer until about 1890. Edmund
Behles died in Rome on 21 November 1921.
Silvia Paoli
BELGIUM
The creation of the Belgian state in 1830 and the inven-
tion of photography were virtually synchronous. The
country’s specifi c cultural and geographical context
made it fertile ground for the new medium to take root.
An initially politically fragile buffer state on France’s
northeastern fl ank, Belgium could only thrive by a policy
of free trade and open borders, to achieve emancipa-
tion, both economically and culturally, from its larger
southern neighbour. This factor contributed to making
Belgian society relatively receptive to innovations such
as photography, and ready to exploit its applications, for
instance to the printing press. Furthermore, Belgium
was the second European power after Great Britain to
undergo the deep cultural change which is labelled the
Industrial Revolution. The resultant consolidation of
a large middle class fostered the diffusion of photog-
raphy both as a leisure pursuit and as an autonomous
economic activity.
The fi rst phase in the socialisation of the new tech-
nology was the experimental or laboratory phase. This
is the period in which the inventor or his representative
hoped to market the invention, without fully meeting
the two preconditions of viability and market need. In
Belgium, the fi rst phase of socialisation lasted from
the announcement of the invention of photography in
January 1839 until the spring of 1842.
The fi gure who best characterises this phase is the
printer, lithographer, journalist and polemicist Jean
Baptiste Jobard (1792–1861). While not exactly a repre-
sentative of Daguerre, he had several meetings with him
in Paris that year, and purchased a camera from Isidore
Niépce, son of the inventor. On 17 September 1839,
he announced in the columns of his own newspaper Le
Courrier belge that he had succeeded in taking the fi rst
photograph in Belgium—a seven-minute exposure from
the window of his Brussels town house. Jobard also
informed his readers that he had set up a company, the
Societe belge du Daguerrotype, and that “the fi rm will
send on site artists versed in selecting the most suitable
viewpoints for monuments, mansions or factories or
machines to be copied, while awaiting [the possibility]
of portraits from life” (Le Courrier belge, 12 September
1839). But Jobard’s initiative was stillborn. It was not
that he had failed to grasp the potential of the new tech-
nology; rather that it had not yet attained viability. Later
on in the year, still possessed by the spirit of utopian
ambition, Jobard foresaw the application of photography
to the printing press: “We declare that before another
six months have passed, daguerreotype plates will be
engraved for print-runs of thousands,” (Le Courrier
belge, 25 September 1839). He was wrong of course,
but it should be remembered that, in common with many
of the pioneers of the new medium, he was a lithogra-
pher by training. His predilection for photography, like
Nicéphore Niépce’s motivation for inventing it, sprang
from a search for a technical aid to the graphic arts, a
means of raising productivity by replicating handmade
objects (lithographs and engravings) in block printing.
The printing press would indeed provide a major appli-
cation for photography—but not yet. Jobard’s fate was
typical of many such precursors in that he was defeated
by a new and untried technology.
By the time the second phase of socialisation was
initiated, the visionary had given way to the commer-
cial. This second phase can be defi ned as a period when
fi nancial incentives and the assistance of entrepreneurs,
willing to shoulder the risk of commercialisation, en-
abled the medium to become truly viable. In Belgium,
the onset of this phase can be dated precisely to the
second week of March 1842, when all of the fi nancial
and technological factors fi nally fell into place with
the opening of the fi rst two portrait studios in Brussels.
In portraiture, photography found or created the well-
defi ned consumer need prerequisite for its success. The