454
On the evening of February 4th while Mr. J. W. Black of
Boston, and his worthy assistant, Mr. J. L. Dunmore, were
about to commence a lantern exhibition in Lowell, one
of the gas bags [the lamp on the lantern projector was
gas fuelled] exploded with tremendous force, threw Mr.
Dunmore high in the air and burned him sadly about the
face and eyes, knocked Mr. Black senseless, drove a stick
through the nose of the organist, and damaged the organ-
loft, organ and church considerably. Mr. Dunmore at this
writing still lies suffering much and very low, but, with
great care, it is hoped, may recover his sight.
Dunmore did, indeed, recover both his health and
his sight.
William Bradford’s portfolio-format book contain-
ing 140 of Dunmore and Critcherson’s images, was
eventually published in London in 1873 in an edition
of 350 copies under the title The Arctic Regions: Illus-
trated with Photographs Taken on an Art Expedition to
Greenland.
While Dunmore gives no information on his pho-
tographic equipment, save for the reference to taking
14" × 18" negatives, the images in the book—tipped-in
albumen prints—are predominantly in two sizes, one
just under 6" × 9" and the large prints approximately
15" × 11". It is likely therefore that he took at least two
cameras.
It was a landmark in the publication of photo-
graphically illustrated books, remains one of the most
impressive volumes of photographs published in the
19th century.
John Hannavy
See also: Albumen Print; and Books Illustrated with
Photographs: 1870s.
Further Reading
Bradford, William, The Arctic Regions: Illustrated with Pho-
tographs Taken on an Art Expedition to Greenland. With
Descriptive Narrative by the Artist. Sampson, Low, Marston,
Low and Searle: London, 1873.
Dunmore, John L. “The Camera Amongst the Icebergs,” in Phila-
delphia Photographer, Vol. 6, No. 72, 412–414.
Fabian, Rainer, and Adam, Hans-Christian, Masters of Early
Travel Photography, Thames & Hudson, London, 1983.
Parr, Martin, and Badger, Gerry, The Photobook: A History (vol.
1), Phaidon, London, 2004.
DURANDELLE, LOUIS-EMILE
(1839–1917)
Born in 1838 in Verdun to Jaques Durandelle and Anne
Bastien, Louis-Emile Durandelle was among the most
accomplished architectural photographers in nineteenth-
century France. Little is known of his early training,
but by 1854 he operated a studio with Hycaninthe
Cesar Delmaet (1828–1862) at 30–32 Chaussée de
Clignancourt, Paris. After Delmaet’s death in 1862,
Durandelle married Delmaet’s widow, Clémence Jacob
Delmaet, who retained her fi rst husband’s surname and
actively participated in the running of the studio which
continued to bear the name Delmaet and Durandelle. In
1862, the studio moved to 22 blvd des Filles-du-Cal-
vaire; after 1868 it was located at 4, rue du Faubourg-
Montmartre.
Although an 1868 prospectus indicates the range
of the studio’s output, which included cartes de visite,
enamel portraits, and “artistic and industrial reproduc-
tion” of objects, Durandelle is best known for photo-
graphs of building projects in and around Paris. While
Durandelle undertook relatively modest projects, such
as photographing the contruction of a tram station and
various private houses in Paris in the early 1860s, he is
best known for a magnifi cent series of about 115 pho-
tographs made between 1865 and 1872 that record the
construction and decoration of the Paris Opéra.
Designed by architect Charles Garnier and built be-
tween 1861 and 1875, the fl amboyant Paris Opéra was
one of the grandest architectural projects of the emperor
Napoléon III’s reign, and a symbol of urban planner Bar-
on Haussmann’s architectural and spatial modernization
of Paris. Durandelle’s large-format albumen prints, most
made from 38 × 28 cm glass negatives, provided sharp,
vivid records of the successive phases of the massive
construction project that entailed excavating a large site
in Paris’s ninth arrondissement. While Durandelle may
have made some prints of the Opéra as early as 1862, it
was only in 1865 that he began systematically photo-
graphing the site and numbering his negatives (Keller,
109). Durandelle’s photographs not only documented
the progress of the building, but also recorded in close
detail the aspects of construction that would later be
invisible to the naked eye, including the iron structural
supports that were eventually covered by a marble fa-
çade and architectural and decorative elements, such
as columns, pediments, and decorative sculpture, that
were placed high on the building’s façade and thus less
accessible to the camera or the human eye.
Many of the photographs from the Opéra series were
eventually published (uncredited) as Le Nouvel Opéra
de Paris, a tome that included two text volumes, two
volumes of lithographs and engravings, and four vol-
umes of photographs. The four folio albums, Sculpture
ornementale, Statues décoratives, Peintures décoratives,
and Bronzes, include 115 photographs by Durandelle
and were distributed to architects and designers.
Precise, economical, and accomplished, Durandelle’s
photographs of the Opéra served multiple purposes:
architectural, technical, juridical, bureaucratic, histori-
cal, and descriptive. Many possess an almost abstract
formalism and dramatic rendering of space and light