834
Thomas Keith in Britain—to suit different qualities and
intensities of light. In its various formulations it became
a high-quality and user-friendly process ideally suited
to travelling photographers and to amateurs. Pre-wax-
ing the paper restricted the light sensitive chemistry
to the paper surfaces, and removed the tendency for a
photographic image of the paper fi bres to be created in
addition to the image of the subject. In its original form,
with the waxed paper immersed in the silver bath, a
light-sensitive coating was created on both faces of the
paper. Later refi nements included fl oating the paper on
the sensitising solution, thus restricting the image-bear-
ing layer to a single surface.
From the point of the travelling photographer, waxed
paper negatives could, if required, be prepared several
days before exposure, and developed several days after-
wards. Thus freed from the constraints of transporting
a darkroom wherever they went, photographers could
concentrate solely on the image.
Le Gray demonstrated the versatility of his process in
a remarkable series of landscapes taken between 1849
and 1852 in the densely wooded Forest of Fontainebleau.
His understanding of the relationship between the light
and the limited spectral sensitivity of his dry waxed
paper negatives is manifest in these images, creating
in his salt prints an intimacy which at once both draws
the viewer into the composition and evokes a strong
emotional relationship with the environment. By careful
choice of both lighting and location, his images went far
beyond simple representation, denoting a clear under-
standing of the potential of his process, and the unique
vision of the camera.
The forest was a subject to which he returned in his
later engagement with collodion, further developing his
personal relationship with the place.
In parallel with his continuing exploration of Fon-
tainebleau, Le Gray applied his talents and his process to
a unique undertaking on behalf of the Commission des
Monuments Historiques, an agency of the French gov-
ernment. Recognising the importance of photography
as a tool of record, the Comte de Laborde, a curator at
the Louvre working on behalf of the Commission, ap-
proached a number of founder members of the Société
Héliographique in Paris in 1851 to undertake a nation-
wide photographic survey of historic buildings, many of
which were deemed to be under threat. Laborde had long
been enthusiastic in his advocacy of photography.
First to be thus commissioned was Edouard Bal-
dus—ironically to photograph buildings around Fon-
tainebleau, an area Le Gray knew so well. Further
commissions went to Henri le Secq, and to Hippolyte
Bayard, who had contributed his own unique process to
the emerging development of photography.
Some months later, Gustave le Gray’s name was
added to the list, with commissions to photography
buildings in and around the Loire valley, Orléans, and
as far south as Carcassonne.
All the photographers commissioned were conversant
with a range of paper negative processes, and all but
Bayard used variants on the calotype or the waxed paper
process to produce their images. Bayard is believed to
have used albumen on glass, the process pioneered in
the late 1840s by Claude Félix Abel Niépce de Saint.
Victor. While about three hundred paper negatives are
archived in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, none of Bayard’s
glass plates is known to have survived.
Le Gray received his commission at the same time as
Olivier Mestral, and the two men appear to have pooled
their lists and elected to work together. The French
journal La Lumière reported that “Accompanied by M.
Mestral, M. Le Gray is working in the region of the
Midi beyond the Loire towards the Mediterranean: he
has not yet returned but has sent precious dispatches.”
While this clearly implies that negatives had been sent
back to Paris, the question remains unanswered as to
whether or not they were processed in the fi eld, or sent
back undeveloped.
Many of the images they created show all the hall-
marks of Le Gray’s mastery of light and shade. Details of
buildings are revealed in bright pools of sunlight, while
other areas are allowed to recede into deep shadows.
They are however overshadowed by his architectural
studies of Paris in the later 1850s, and of Italy and Egypt
in the early 1860s.
Just what the Commission initially planned to do with
these images is not clear, but in the event it did little
except secure their survival. They were not published,
and indeed relatively few were even printed. But as
many of the buildings photographed were subsequently
subjected to ill-informed “restorations” in the years that
followed, these images have today acquired an histori-
cal importance far beyond any original intentions the
Commission might have harboured.
Concurrent with these major undertaking with waxed
paper, Le Gray had, according to N. P. Lerebours in La
Lumière in 1852, also been working with the wet col-
lodion process since 1850. He had also been working
with albumen on glass, and Philip Delamotte exhibited
two such images amongst fi ve Le Gray titles at Great
Britain’s fi rst photographic exhibition at the Royal
Society of Arts, London in December 1852. Waxed
paper, however, still remained his principal and pre-
ferred medium well into 1854, at which time it still
featured strongly in the fourth edition of his treatise on
photography.
Later in 1854, he became one of the founder members
of the Société Française de Photographie, and a member
of its management committee.
Whilst the dating of many of Le Gray’s extant images
is problematic, there is scant evidence of his continuing