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DU CAMP, MAXIME (1822–1894)
French photographer and writer
Du Camp was born in Paris on 2 February 1822, the
only child of wealthy aristocrats. His father, Théodore-
Joseph, a surgeon, died a year after Du Camp’s birth and
his mother, Alexandrine, when Du Camp was fi fteen. He
departed on his one and only photographic excursion to
Egypt and the Near East not long after the Revolution of
1848 in which he was wounded and awarded the Medal
of the Legion of Honor. Just before he set sail in 1849,
his last remaining relative, a grandmother, died. Du
Camp wrote of the deaths in his family as determining
the course of his life, especially that of his mother. She
mother became “that gentle ghost ... [who] followed me
on my travels, became a part of my intimate existence,
my work, even my pleasures.” (Souvenirs littéraires,
(Recollections of a Literary Life), Paris: Aubier, 1994,
139) Indeed, Du Camp remained a lifelong bachelor
despite several amorous liasons.
Du Camp’s obsession with death was also nurtured
by having come of age at the end of the Romantic
movement. “Never had death been more loved,” wrote
Du Camp. “The generation of artists and writers that
preceded me, to which I belonged, suffered ... an ab-
stract sorrow, inherent to their being or to their epoch.”
(Souvenirs littéraires, 156–157). In his teens Du Camp
gorged himself on Romantic literature, especially the
poems and novels of his idol, Victor Hugo.
Like many youths of his generation, Du Camp was
swept up by a wave of Orientalism focused on Egypt
in particular as the site of an extinct culture often de-
scribed as “the cradle of Western civilization.” It was
upon the realization of his dream of going to Egypt
that Du Camp took up photography, but not as a means
of personal expression. For him the camera was “an
instrument of precision ... which would allow me
exact reconstructions.” Along with Du Camp’s youth-
ful romantic leanings was an obsession, perhaps also
infl uenced by familial losses, with detailed and exact
documentation of places, persons, and events. It was
this aspect of his personality, together with a driving
ambition to make a name for himself, which led him
to the take on the new medium. As the practical op-
portunist that facts and contemporary accounts reveal
him to have been, he prepared extensively for this trip
in other ways as well. He read widely among ancient
and contemporary works, copying long extracts in his
even, cramped script. He procured an offi cial mis-
sion from the Ministry of Public Education as well as
membership in the scholarly Société orientale [Oriental
Society], all with the promise that he would bring back
abundant documentation. He studied photography with
Gustave Le Grey but had little success with his method
and switched to the wet waxed paper negative process
of Blanquart-Evrard that he learned from Alexis Dela-
grange en route. Once launched Du Camp photographed
with a vengeance throughout the entire length of Egypt
from Alexandria to the second cataract. His good friend
and traveling companion Gustave Flaubert commented,
“I don’t know how Maxime hasn’t killed himself with
this raging mania for photography” (Letter to his mother,
15 April 1850). Du Camp also kept copious notes andDU CAMP, MAXIME
Du Camp, Maxime. Westernmost Colossus of the Temple of
Re.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection, Gift of
The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005 (2005.100.376.149)
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.