309
neering applications. His most important patron was the
Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works.
With Edouard Baldus, by commission of the Emperor,
he also documented the expansion of the railroad in
France. A fi rst album (1857), dedicated to the re-build-
ing of the Pont St Michel, marked the beginning of a
25-year-long collaboration with the ‘Administration
des Ponts et Chaussées,’ the last outcome of which is
an illustrated report on the reservoir of Noisel (1885).
The process and outcomes of architectural construction
have by then become the focus of the ‘Atelier Collard.’
Its prints span the major urban upheavals of these times,
throughout the territory and not the least in Paris.
Always conscious of the quality of his prints, dis-
played notably at the universal exhibitions, Collard
designed in 1860 a proprietary solution known as “bain
de virage (toning bath) Collard.”
Luce Lebart
COLLECTORS
If twentieth-century collectors of photographs are just
recently becoming well known, then those of the previ-
ous period were mostly unknown. A very few studies
have been conducted in the domain of 19th century col-
lectors and photographic market. This gap can also be
explained by the fact that the idea of a large disinterest
for old photography, which marked the fi rst half of the
20th century, and has been extended to the second part
of the 19th century. However, everything indicates that
many people during this period were able to distinguish
between photographic prints of a work of art, a docu-
ment, an industrial production or a scientifi c archive.
To study this complex topic, one must not only ask
who collected photography, but also which types of
images were collected and where one could fi nd photog-
raphy. The advancement of the history of photography
and the studies of contemporary documents illuminated
the fi rst clues which established the parameters for this
type of research.
The fi gure of collector has changed throughout time
and in accordance with the type of objects collected.
Photography is one of the subjects which considerably
changed the traditional ideal of the collector. Since the
beginning of photography collecting images was made
possible because it was democratic, available, and easy
to archive. Photography also produced collectors of
various types who were more diversifi ed than before. If
the fi rst collectors were aristocrats and rich bourgeois,
at the end of the century, then a new type of collector
appeared. The average man in the street became a col-
lector too. This new medium had begun to democratised
the collector as art enthusiast.
Since the end of the 1830s, the art market was in
full expansion. It extended rapidly and the number of
collectors in general increased constantly with the rise
of middle class. Galleries opened and showed various
exhibitions as the Beaux-Arts Salon did. The engrav-
ing market was particularly fl ourishing and the dealer
as the collector became an emblematic fi gure of the art
world. At the same time, linked to the engraving market,
a photographic market began to appear. Photographic
prints could be found in traditional places for engraving
amateurs: book shops, shops of engravings and draw-
ings, but also in studios and shops of photographers, in
editor’s places (Colnaghi in London, Gide & Baudry,
Gosselin, Pellion, Legoupy in Paris), paper-makers,
camera manufacturer places (Susse and Giroux in Paris)
and in auction rooms.
This context shows that during this period there
existed several kinds of collectors: princes and prin-
cesses, aristocrats, artists, architects, industrialists, rich
amateurs of art and tourists, but also public institutions,
museums, libraries and schools dedicated to art and
science education. Those institutional collections were
held by curators and the collection itself was related to
the public institution’s history and policy, to the state’s
will. Several academic collections were established
in universities and libraries throughout Europe. In the
United States, the Library of Congress was established
in Washington, D.C. The collection started in 1870,
contains photographs of Fenton and 12 millions of
photographs of the country’s history. The Victoria and
Albert Museum (VAM), the Bibliothèque Nationale
de France (BNF) and the Institut de France have all
been collecting since 1850, which thanks to the “dépôt
légal” and the royal sponsor, consists of a large number
of prints of all kind from landscapes, to portraits and
offi cial patrimonial missions like Mission heliographic
in 1851, commissioned by the young Commission of
historical monument. The Société française de photogra-
phie (SFP) and the Photographic Society of London both
pioneered the collection of photographs and specifi cally
stated that the assembly of the collection was a part of
their raison d’etre.
However, the focus rather was put on private col-
lections, because as collectors are defi ned in the Pierre
Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle,
“they are those jumble sales apostles, who had learned
the state of forming archives, museums, deposits of
all kinds.” At fi rst, an outline on the emergence of the
photograph collectors appeared, and was followed by
the various types of collectors there could be.
In France, the organisation of photography auction
sales is not well known, but several elements indicate
that a photograph market did exist. Helène Bocart’s
studies of the SFP exhibitions in the 19th century and
the examination of contemporary art magazines give
partial answers. The fi rst photographic sale known
in Paris was organised in 1857 by the SFP, from its