201
age of 50 in 1907, the business had already shrunk to
small size.
Rolf Sachsse
BRANDT, CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH
(1823–1891)
Christian Friedrich Brandt was born on July 1, 1823, in
Schleswig as the second child of the bookbinder Chris-
tian Wilhelm Brandt. From 1837 to 1840, he learned the
craft from his father and went journeying subsequently
throughout the German countries. It is likely that he
learned more of the craft of the graphic arts when he
was traveling. When he returned to take over the father’s
workshop in 1848, he already had some basic knowl-
edge in the Daguerreotype method. From 1852, Brandt
worked as a photographer and dealer in photographic
equipment in the town of Flensburg. During the fi rst
decade he ran his own workshop, between 1852 and
1863, there was nothing remarkable about Brandt’s work
except that he produced good quality portraits. In 1863,
he reproduced the altarpiece of Hans Brueggemann at
the Schleswig cathedral. It was with this commissioned
photograph that he immediately became one of the lead-
ing fi gures in the interpretation of late medieval sculp-
ture. His idea was to take the altarpiece apart and have
the scenes taken under daylight conditions in front of a
dark cloth and sometimes even under sunlight giving the
fi gures more expression through shadows. The images
were not sold before 1865. Before Brandt expanded his
business by photographing other altarpieces and private
collections of medieval art, he received a commission
to take photographs of the German troops at the fi nal
battle of the Danish-German war. These photographs
were reprinted over and over in the years of 1865 to
1866 and were very successful economically. In 1865,
he was commissioned to photograph the collection of
medieval sculpture of Gustav Thaulow in Kiel being
published relatively successful in 1867. He returned
to large reproduction campaigns of altarpieces in the
Rhinelands by 1868 but these compaigns suffered from
being published more than a decade later when he was
bankrupt. From 1869 to 1883, he worked as a portrait
photographer in Flensburg. Closing his workshop in
1883 and unable to work, Brandt’s last years remained
in total poverty and he and his wife lived in a number of
the city’s poorhouses; he died on June 3, 1891.
Rolf Sachsse
BRAQUEHAIS, AUGUSTE BRUNO
(1823–1875)
French photographer
Braquehais was born in Dieppe on January 1823. After
having studied at the Royale Institute of deafs and mutes
of Paris, he worked as a lithographer in Caen. Back in
Paris in 1850, he met Alexis Gouin, photographer with
whom he joined to make portraits, reconstitutions,
colored daguerreotypes and stereoscopic images on
plates. His offi cial photographer’s beginnings dated
from 1851, when he appeared on the Bottin, the Parisian
commercial directories. 1852 marked his fi rst collabora-
tion with Gouin’s daughter, Laure, who was as well a
photographer and colourist trained by her parents. She
did the colouring on his pictures printed on oil cloth.
The same year, he moved to his own studio rue de
Richelieu, 110.
In 1854, he proposed and registered—for copyright
purposes—seven numbered copies of artistic female
nudes, printed out by E. Péruche and entitled Daguer-
rian Museum. His deafness is shown through these
pictures in which the models seemed to be “alone” and
isolated notably because of their theatrical stances and
the numerous accessories (statues, veils, armours, paint-
ings...) around them. In La Lumière, E. Lacan, even if
he regretted the recurrent appearance of a Venus plaster,
mainly noted about these images that it was
... impossible to handle collodion more skillfully. His
prints are altogether limpid. The lines are fi nely marked
without being hard, the tones are both highly translucent
and remarkably forceful; the modelling is at once well-
defi ned and mellowed; the lighting is deftly handled, thus
conferring striking relief to the forms, which we are made
to see down to the last detail....
He supposedly married Laure upon her father’s
death in 1855 (the sources don’t come to an agree-
ment about the exact date of their wedding) and took
over Gouins’ studio with her and his mother-in-law
at rue, Louis-le-Grand, 37. Mrs Gouin continued her
miniaturist work and decided to sell Gouin’s colours.
The couple worked in creating nude fi gure studies and
producing stereoscopic portraits. They specialized in
daguerreotypes, a process they would be the last to use
in Paris. At this level, their works looked the closest to
Alexis Gouin’s.
From 1863, following the death of Gouin’s widow,
the Braquehais set up to Boulevard des Italiens, 11, at
the sign of La photographie parisienne. Bruno Braque-
hais then lived an intense period of activity. In 1864, he
presented with Despaquis some carbon prints warmly
received at the Société française de photographie. He
also participated to several exhibitions: he exhibited his
images in Berlin in 1865 and at the Paris Exhibition in
1867 where he received a honorable mention. Two years
later, he teamed up again with Despaquis, author of
“Carbon photography for amateurs” (Lieber, 1866), who
had been granted Poitevin’s carbon process patents and
proposed him to produce the paper for L’arbon prints.
However it is above all because of La Commune de