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BELLOC, JOSEPH AUGUSTE
(c. 1800–c. 1868)
French photographer
Joseph Auguste Belloc was born in the beginning of the
19th century, in Montrabe, located in the Southwest of
France (Haute-Garonne).
He began his career as a painter of miniatures and
watercolors. Belloc’s fi rst photographic studio was men-
tioned in 1851. Practicing daguerreotype, he became
involved in wet collodion development and improved
the wax coating process, helping the pictures to keep
their wet-like luster.
But the most important research he led was about
color stereoscopy (3 dimensional photography). Known
for his nudes and portraits, he looked for the best way
to express the reality and found a new method. This
practice considered erotic photography and was declared
illegal by the police in 1856 and 1860.
However, he was aware of the new discoveries and
tried to facilitate the technique. In 1856, he even regis-
tered a patent for a framework and presented his inven-
tion at the Société française de photographie of which
he was member since 1854.
From the very beginning, he was implied in the
photographic democratization, gave photographic
lessons and wrote about ten treatises concerning the
photographic processes, the way to use them, and some
of practical advice.
“Les Quatre branches de la photographie,” edited in
1855, was so successful that it was republished three
years later.
When he disappeared in 1868, his studio was ac-
quired by Gaudenzio Marconi.
Marion Perceval
BEMIS, SAMUEL (1789–1881)
Dr. Samuel Bemis, a Boston dentist, made his fi rst
daguerreotype on April 19, 1840, using a whole plate
camera he purchased from Jean-Baptiste François
Fauvel-Gouraud of New York four days earlier for the
considerable sum of $51. That camera is believed to have
been the fi rst sold in America by Gouraud, the American
agent for Parisian camera maker Giroux et Cie, and
the camera, along with the bill of sale, is preserved in
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, along
with several of his early images. The twelve plates Be-
mis purchased at the same time cost him a further $24,
with an additional dollar for carriage.
His fi rst image, of King’s Chapel Burial Ground in
Boston, showing the small cemetery hemmed in by tall
buildings, is also in the George Eastman House collec-
tion, which holds the only twelve identifi ed images by
him, several of which are variations on the same subject.
On the reverse of the plate, Bemis recounted every stage
of the process—“Boston, April 19 1840.—S. A Bemis’s
fi rst daguerreotype experiment.—Iodizing process 25
mts. (apparatus new), camera process 40 mts.—Wind
N.W., sky clear, air dry and very cold for the season.
—Lens meniscus Daguerr’s (sic) apparatus.—Time 4.50
to 5.30 p.m.; N.Y. plate, ordinary.”
Bemis took his camera to the White Mountains in
summer 1840, but, dissatisfi ed by the unpredictability
of his results, within a year had lost interest in photog-
raphy completely.
John HannavyBENECKE, ERNEST (1817–1894)
French photographerAlthough Benecke’s importance as an early traveler/
photographer in the Near East has long been recognized,
few of his works were identifi ed until recently. Preceded
in his voyage to Egypt by a number off well-known
photographers including Maxime Du Champ and Felix
Teynard, Benecke differed from them in largely ignor-
ing Pharaonic and other ancient monuments in favor
of ethnographic studies. When depicting buildings or
landscape, he preferred views of unfamiliar scenes or
monuments seen from unusual angles.
Though Benecke can no longer be regarded as the
fi rst photographer of everyday life in the Near East, his
work remains the most comprehensive body of ethno-
graphic views known from the region during the early
years of photography.
A well-to-do amateur, Benecke made no effort to
exhibit his work or to join photographic societies, and
his biography remains among the most obscure of im-
portant mid-nineteenth century photographers. Benecke
(1817–1894) belonged to an English mercantile family
of German origin that was involved in textile manufac-
turing. The family fi rm, Benecke Brothers, had branches
at various times in London, Manchester, Leeds, Lille
and Alexandria. When the fi rm was dissolved in 1850,
Ernest Benecke remained in Lille. It is not known when
and where Benecke learned photography. By the time
of his “grand tour” of Egypt, Nubia [modern northern
Sudan], Syria, Lebanon, the Holy Land, Greece and Italy
in 1852 he was active as a photographer, utilizing the
paper negative process to produce salted paper prints.
After his return, four of Benecke’s studies appeared,
some more than once, in albums produced in 1853
and 1854 by Louis-Desire Blanquart-Evrard of Lille,
the leading European photographic publisher of the
period. This publication of Benecke’s work, the only
one in his lifetime, may be assumed to be the result of
a personal acquaintance in Lille between photographer
and publisher.