175
See Also: Archaeology; Architecture; Artists’
studies; Ethnography; Orientalism; Ottoman
Empire, Asian, and Persia; Photographic publishers;
Photographic retailing; Women photographers;
Niépce de Saint-Victor, Claude Félix Abel; Dumas,
Tancrède; Société Française de Photographie;
Albumen Prints; Collotype; Sebah, J. Pascal and
Joaillier; Sommer, Giorgio; Alinari, Fratelli; and
Naya, Carlo.
Further Reading
Anonymous, “Ateliers de phototypie de M. Bonfi ls à Alais,”
Moniteur de la photographie, July 1st, 1880, 97–98 (this issue
contains a collotype print by Bonfi ls).
Aubenas, Sylvie, Voyage en Orient, Paris: Hazan, 1999.
Bonfi ls, Félix, Souvenirs d’Orient. Album pittoresque des sites,
villes et ruines les plus remarquables de l’Égypte et de la
Nubie, de la Palestine, de la Syrie et de la Grèce, Alès (Gard):
Bonfi ls, 1878, 5 volumes (I-II: Egypt & Nubia; III: Palestine;
IV: Syria; V: Greece and Constantinople).
El-Hage, Badr, Des photographes à Damas, 1840–1918, Paris:
Marval, 2000.
Fuso, Silvio, Mariano Fortuny Collezionista: Alinari, Atget,
Bonfi ls, Laurent, Quinet, Sella, Milano: Electa, c1983 (ex-
hibition catalogue).
Gavin, Carney E.S., “Bonfi ls and the Early Photography in the
Near East,” Harvard Library Bulletin, v. 26, no. 4, October
1978, 442–470.
——, The Image of the East, Nineteenth Century Near Eastern
Photographs by Bonfi ls From the Collections of the Harvard
Semitic Center, Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1982.
Haller, Douglas M., In Arab Lands: the Bonfi ls Collection of
the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Cairo: American
University in Cairo Press, 2000.
Hamilakis, Yannis, “Monumental Visions: Bonfi ls, Classical
Antiquity and Nineteenth-Century Athenian Society,” History
of Photography, Vol. 25, no. 1, 2001, 5–12.
Perez, Nissan N., Focus East, New York: Abrams / Jerusalem:
Domino Press, 1988.
Sobieszek, Robert, and Gavin, Carney E.S., Remembrances
of the Near East: The Photographs of Bonfi ls, 1867–1907,
Rochester: International Museum for Photography at George
Eastman House, 1980.
Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew, “Félix Bonfi ls and the Traveler’s
Trail through Athens,” History of Photography, Vol. 25, no.
1, 2001, 13–43.
——, “The Genius of Félix Bonfi ls,” Archaeology, 54, no. 3,
May/June 2001.
Thomas, Ritchie, “Bonfi ls & Son, Egypt, Greece, and the Levant;
1867–1894,” History of Photography, Vol. 3, no. 1, January
1979, 33–46 (see also corrections in correspondence by Paul
E. Chevedden, History of Photography, Vol. 5, no. 1, Janu-
ary 1981, 82).
BONNARD, PIERRE (1867–1947)
French Painter
Best known for paintings pervaded by brilliant light
and radiant color, Pierre Bonnard is less renown for his
photographic experiments. It was not until the late 1970s
that the artist’s photographic oeuvre was recognized at
all, and only in the 1980s, was his work in photography
given analytical consideration and viewed in relation-
ship to his paintings.
Bonnard’s interest in photography seems to have
been more the result of historical circumstance than
genuine technical curiosity. By the 1880s, when cam-
eras became smaller and lighter and negatives were
industrially prepared, photographic equipment became
accessible to amateurs. With the creation of the Kodak
portable camera, its small negatives, pliable fi lm, and
instant photos in 1888, the camera became a necessary
accouterment for many artists. It has been speculated
that Bonnard’s brief foray into photography was spurred
not by his desire to employ it as a serious medium but
rather by the fact that many of his peers had cameras.
Writers Emile Zola, August Strindberg and painters
Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch, Franz von Stuck, and
Bonnard’s close friend Edouard Vuillard all took up the
camera and allowed the medium to infl uence their other
artistic and literary experimentations.
Bonnard may have been introduced to the photo-
graphic process by Vuillard, who was himself an avid
photographer of notable technical accomplishment,
even involving his mother in the developing process, but
Bonnard was also acquainted with the Lumière brothers,
Auguste and Louis, through his musician brother-in-law
Claude Terrasse and spent time with them at the family
estate at Le Grand-Lemps. These interactions may have
infl uenced Bonnard’s own photographic vision as well
as the vision he subsequently took from the viewfi nder
and applied to his canvases.
In contrast to Degas, who approached photography
with a preconceived aesthetic end, utilizing the then
obsolete glass plate negative, a tripod and dramatically
lit interiors in order to study the movement and form
of his dancer models, Bonnard was more casual in his
photographic work. He neither went to the trouble of
learning how to develop or enlarge his work, as did
Degas and Vuillard, nor did he require elaborate poses
of his subjects. He was also conspicuously silent about
this segment of his oeuvre, providing no written insight
into his intentions, theories, or techniques. Ultimately,
he seemed to regard this work as secondary to his paint-
ing and not necessarily an end in itself.
While Bonnard’s earliest known photo, an image
of his cousin Berthe Schaedlin dates from the early
1890s, he did not begin photographic work in earnest
until 1898. It is not clear why a gap exists in Bonnard’s
photographic productivity. Critics and historians have
suggested that he may have been dissatisfi ed with his
earlier attempts in a relatively new medium and kept
only those photographs having sentimental value.
It was between 1898 and 1916, when Bonnard’s
photographic output was at its highest level and