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the 1850s when other process where replacing it in other
parts of Europe. Portuguese society was just starting its
modernization, made possible by the consolidation of lib-
eral government. Cifka was, most likely, the publisher of
the fi rst stereoscopic views of Portugal and participated
in the mid nineteenth century most important exhibitions:
The 1849 Exposição Industrial de Lisboa, the 1851 Ex-
posição Filantrópica, the 1867 Exposition Universelle
de Paris, among others. He also made an album with the
major sculpture works of the Mafra National Palace, one
of 18th Century’s major monuments.
Cifka had a major role in the popularization of
photography in Portugal; he had many students, includ-
ing the King Ferdinand and (according to Portuguese
culture and art historian, José Augusto França) Carlos
Relvas, the best known 19th century Portuguese amateur
photographer. His images were mostly lost and few are
known today.
Nuno Pinheiro
CIVIALE, AIME (1821–1893)
Aimé Civiale was born in Paris, in 1821 and was
not a professional photographer, but a geologist. He
studied sciences in the famous French Polytechnique
School.
In 1857–1858, he began to photograph the Pyrénées.
The same year he became a member of the Société fran-
çaise de photographie. Civiale regularly presented his
research at the French Academy of Sciences. But he is
especially known as the photographer of the Alps that
he studied between 1859 and 1868.
As an engineer, he did not use his photography prac-
tice only as a proof of his geological research, but also
as a way to show new landscapes and to keep traces
of them before erosion makes them change. In these
extreme conditions, photographs were particularly dif-
fi cult to realize. Despite using aluminum for the lens’s
frame instead of copper, he had to bring with him up to
550 lbs. of photographic devices.
In this environment he could not use the wet col-
lodion plates. He then decided to choose Gustave Le
Gray’s technique, using waxed paper for the negatives,
technique that he later improved by adding beeswax to
paraffi n. He also built a camera able to represent the 360
degrees view in forteen panoramic images.
Aimé Civiale died in Paris, in 1893.
Marion Perceval
Exhibitions
Royal Photographic Society, London, 1858.
Third Exhibition of the Société française de photographie,
1859.
Fourth Exhibition of the Société française de photographie,
1861.
Fifth Exhibition of the Société française de photographie, 1863.
Sixth Exhibition of the Société française de photographie, 1864.
Seventh Exhibition of the Société française de photographie,
1865.
Eighth Exhibition of the Société française de photographie,
1869.CLAINE, GUILLAUME (1811–1869)
Belgian photographer
Guillaume Claine was born in the small southern
Belgian town of Marche-en-Famenne on 12 January- An obscure provincial upbringing was followed
by a two-year stint as an editor on the liberal Brussels
daily L’Observateur around 1841. Several attempts to
promote his career within the Belgian administration
came to naught, and, suffering from ill health (the nature
of which was never specifi ed), he gave up journalism.
Together with his wife, Augusta Van Buggenhoudt
(1810–1871), Claine moved from the centre of Brussels
to the outlying commune of Saint Gilles on 10 July 1845,
where he was registered as a law student, and then to
nearby Molenbeek on 19 May 1847, where their only
child Auguste Emile was born on 10 June 1847. Claine
earned his living as a court stenographer, while referring
to himself as a man of letters.
By this time, Claine was devoting his leisure time
to the calotype. He entered into collaboration with
Louis Jacopssen (1797–1877), an artistically inclined
arboriculturist and landowner who ran the domaine de
Bloemendael, a rural estate near Bruges. They made
excursions together, to Bruges, Ghent and Brussels,
view-taking and print-making as dedicated amateurs.
Their most notable achievement was a series includ-
ing views of the royal palace at Laeken, to the north
of Brussels, the resultant salt prints characteristically
retouched to suggest billowing clouds. Claine wrote:
“nous avons vécu des mois entiers dans la chambre
noire... la phot[ographie] nous a fait dépenser en
deux années quelque chose comme trois à quatre
mille francs” [we have lived whole months in the dark
room... phot[ography] has made us spend in two years
something like three to four thousand francs] (letter to
Joseph-Ernest Buschmann dated 24 December 1849).
Claine, ambitious and impecunious, had become a
competent landscape photographer, and cast around for
a way to profi t from his skills. Rather than opening a stu-
dio, at a period when the daguerreotype was still the only
widely accepted process in Belgium and portraiture its
sole commercially viable application, Claine began lob-
bying the Belgian government for a subsidy. He addressed
a formal request to the Interior Minister, Charles Rogier
(1800–1885) in October 1849, and in parallel publicized
his efforts in the Brussels press, not least L’Observateur,
which praised the quality of the prints: “Entre autres