410
Phonoscope scenes, including Danseuse de French-Can-
can, Premiere pas de bébé, and Passage du train.
Following a contract with Leon Gaumont, the
Phonoscope disc viewer / projector (renamed Bioscope)
was offered for sale late 1895, and early 1896 the Biog-
raphe camera using 60mm unperforated fi lm. The disc
machine gave only very brief projections, and failed
commercially, being immediately superseded by fi lm
projectors. However, Gaumont successfully exploited
the ‘beater’ mechanism in later machines, and Demenÿ
returned to his fi rst interest, gymnastics instruction. He
died in Paris on 26 December 1917.
Stephen Herbert
DENIER, HENRY (ANDREJ
IVANOVITCH) (1820–1892)
Professional photographer
A. Denier was born in Mahilyow in 1820 in the family
of Swiss settlers. In 1849 he graduated from the St.
Petersburg Academy of Arts.
In 1851 Denier opened the “Daguerreotype studio
of the artist Denier” in which some of the future well-
known artists such as I. Kramskoj worked as retouchers.
Denier was a famous master of the photographic portrait.
In 1859 Denier’s works were shown in a session at the
Paris Academy of Science. Denier was a member of the
Société française de photographie. After the exhibition
of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1860 Denier
was given a title of the “Photographer of the Imperial
Academy of Arts.”
In 1865 the “Album of the photographic portraits of
the famous personalities of Russia” was published. As
a result 13 publications were made, with each album
containing 12 mounted cartes-de-visite. Apart from
the photographs of celebrities each album contained
one cartes-de-visite illustrating a peasant. Denier par-
ticipated and won prizes in many Russian and foreign
exhibitions—for example in ones which took place in
Berlin (1865), London (1862, 1871, 1872), Moscow
(1872) and others.
Denier died in St. Petersburg in 1892.
Alexei Loginov
DENMARK
A few days before the release of Daguerre’s process in
Paris, the Danish consul general in Paris, the archae-
ologist Christian Tuxen Falbe, went to see the inventor
and get a personal introduction to his work. His quest
was not on his own behalf. The consul general came as
a representative for the Danish crown prince Christian
Frederik, the later King Christian VIII, and in a sense
for the people of Denmark. In a letter to the crown
prince, Falbe described the visit and the works Daguerre
presented to him in the few hours he spent in his studio:
“They look like those copperplates that used to be known
as ‘the black art.’ One must use a magnifying glass to
see—with the highest degree of admiration—the detail
in every paving stone, read every letter in the inscrip-
tions of the street signs, and contemplate even the fi nest
irregularities that are revealed in the joints of plaster fi g-
ures.” The process would, he gathered, become of great
interest to both scientists and artists in Denmark.
Over the following couple of decades, Tuxen Falbes
premonition proved true. The photographic medium
spread to more or less all circles of society with a speed
that mirrored the rest of Europe and America. Naturally,
the spread of the different processes, photographic
formats and trends in some instances came to the Scan-
dinavian countries with a slight delay. The vitrotype
and the pannotype came to Denmark around 1855, and
negative based paper prints, used from the beginning of
the 1850s, were made on salt paper until around 1857,
when salt was replaced by albumen. Collodion emulsion
chloride paper came to be used alongside albumen paper
from 1865, both lasting into the 1890s, and from 1880
gelatin emulsion paper and similar types competed with
the two. Cartes-de-visite were introduced in Denmark
in 1860 by the photographer Rudolph Striegler, and the
cardomania throve until 1865. In 1866, the somewhat
larger cabinet cards replaced the cartes-de-visite, and
in the 1880s these saw a revival in the family photo
albums with photographs of stars from the theatre.
Stereoscope photographs became very popular around
1850, and their popularity lasted into the 20th century.
The postcard format was introduced in the last part of
the 1880s, and unlike the other card formats, the post-
card came to stay.
By the 1860s, people of all classes could afford hav-
ing their portraits taken by one of the growing number
of studio photographers all over Denmark. Having one’s
portrait taken was a fashionable type of leisure, and a
signal to the community that one’s priorities were in the
right order. Placing oneself and one’s family on the pho-
tographic map signifi ed an interest in family chronology,
social and industrial progress, and society in general.
The standardized portraits were placed in albums, hung
on walls and distributed amongst friends and family.
The Danish Royal family, with King Christian IX in
the front and some very photographic daughters behind
him, helped promote the image of visually reproducible
nuclear family happiness. In pictures of the royal family,
the public saw a relaxed atmosphere with family people
they could relate to. Cartes-de-visite, cabinet cards and
postcards with the royal family were cherished memo-
rabilia in the Danish homes, and comparable to the mass
produced celebrity posters that are popular today, they
projected an image of obtainable idealism that inspired