1268
fi ght against Austria. The image combined reproductive
technology, politics, and a moment of history in the
making. Silvy was also meant to travel with the Italian
campaign to make photographs but the French army
succeeded in their mission before Silvy could receive
his papers to go.
In 1859, Silvy moved to London and established a
portrait studio. There he made carte de visites, recently
patented by the Frenchman Disderi, which makes him
most likely the fi rst carte-de-visite photographer in Lon-
don. Soon Silvy moved to a large and spacious portrait
studio in Porchester Terrace, Bayswater. Within two
and a half years he had taken close to seven thousand
portraits of famous and upper class citizens. He photo-
graphed individuals and groups in elaborate studio set-
tings as well as arrangements of fi gures in landscapes.
Beyong the studio, Silvy continued to be inventive
with the medium. In the late 1850s he created a series
of studies of light and weather as well as a series of
street scenes. Silvy made photographic reproductions of
early manuscripts, particularly the “Sforza Manuscript”
in which he discovered that photography, because it
could capture yellow ink and render it as black, could
also play a restorative role as well as a documentary
one. When a major controversy over whether pho-
tography could be exhibited in the Fine Arts section
of the 1862 International Exhibition occurred, Silvy,
who was a member of both societies, stood in favor of
photography’s industrial classifi cation. Silvy was also
an inventor of machines, such as a cylindrical camera
body that could house a rolled waxed-paper negative
and in 1867 he made a panorama of the Champs Elysées
to demonstrate his invention. He invented the idea of a
tripod that could keep a lens horizontal to the ground
for surveying. Silvy experimented in making print runs
of photographs in ink and worked in photoceramics and
photographed tombs in the Dreux chapel in Normandy
by magnesium light.SILVY, CAMILLE-LÉON-LOUIS
Silvy, Camille. Les Petits Savoyards
(Street Musicians).
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© The J. Paul Getty Museum.