1369
eral aristocratic families enjoyed close relationships to
France and its scientifi c milieu and it is rather through
this network that photography was introduced. A banker
in Geneva, Jean-Gabriel Eynard Lullin (1775–1863)
produced as an amateur daguerreotypist a remarkable
photographic oeuvre depicting his relatives, his friends
and his mansions. The mathematician and astronomy
professor in Lausanne, Marc Secretan (1804–1867)
published his 3Traité de photographie2 in Paris in 1842.
At the same time Les Excursions daguerriennes were
issued by Lerebours, for which the painter, engraver and
collaborator of Secretan, Frederik von Martens (1806?–
1885?), engraved a few plates. In the early 1840s, the
tinsmith Samuel Heer-Tschudi (1811–1889) provided
them both with metal plates for their daguerreotypes, be-
fore he himself turned daguerreotypist in the mid 1840s.
Despite the several mentions in the newspapers of views
of cities, buildings and landscapes, the daguerreotypes
which have survived are almost exclusively portraits.
Adrien Constant Delessert (1806–1876) who en-
tertained close links with international photographic
circles and was recognized as a photographer as well as a
scientist, was instrumental in transmitting the technique
of the Calotypes. Paul Vionnet (1830–1914), Secretan’s
nephew, learnt it from him in 1845 and was to use it as
a means of documenting old buildings, monuments and
landscapes. The tradesman Jean Walther (1806–1866)
in Vevey, also taught by Constant Delessert in 1850,
worked locally but took a series of remarkable views
of Athens. Around 1855–60, Charles de Bouell pro-
duced a series of salt prints representing Basle and the
archeologist, historian and politician Auguste Quiquerez
(1801–1882, perhaps together with his son Edouard)
documented the Canton of Jura with more than a hundred
pictures of monuments, ruins and landscapes. In 1852/53,
Carl Durheim created one of the most interesting group
of Calotypes, the fi rst large body of police photographs:
about 220 portraits of itinerants without citizenship, vaga-
bonds and criminals, commissioned by the new Federal
Government. The use of photography for police purposes
was introduced on cantonal levels soon after that. Many
daguerreotypists began offering salted prints in the early
1850s, like Durheim in Bern, Christian Müller in Zurich
or Wick in Basle.
Around 1860 large family businesses began emerg-
ing, most of them devoted to portrait photography and
the production of local views. The Taeschler studio,
founded by the watchmaker, painter, and later itinerant
photographer Johann Baptist Täschler (1805–1866) was
established in St. Fiden (near St. Gallen) in 1850 and
forced to close after WWI. The German Jakob Höfl inger
(1819–1892) settled down in Basle in 1857. His fi rm
did not fl ourish however, until the introduction of the
carte-de-visite. His son, Karl Albert (1855–1936), and
his nephew, August (1867–1939), took up the business
in 1885 and managed it until the 1910s. The inventor
of the Pinacoscope (a projector for colored slides), Jo-
hannes Ganz (1821–1886) opened a store in Zurich in- His son Rudolf (1848–1927), a great portraitist,
sold the company to Camille Ruf (1872–1939) in 1902.
Another German, Johann Linck (1831–1900) arrived
in Winterthur in 1863 and opend his own studio a year
later. Apart from portraits, Linck specialized in exterior
and interior views of the plants and factories in town
documenting the booming industrial growth beginning
in the 1870s.
SWITZERLAND
Durheim, Carl. Postmortem of a Child.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© The J. Paul Getty Museum.