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Bayard—to make the fi rst photographic inventory. La
Mission héliographique was born within the Société
héliographique; the fi ve photographers as well as Léon
de Laborde, one of the most infl uential members of
the Historical Monuments administration, were all
members. At the end of the 1830s Prosper Mérimée
traveled throughout French territories and documented
monuments needing restoration and photography pro-
vided best illustrative accuracy. The aesthetic qualities
of these prints were outstanding. The French Adminis-
tration did not publish the prints it ordered. They have
been kept in the fi les gathered on each building for the
Historical Monuments architects which roused Francis
Wey’s indignation. La Lumière critic as well as most
members of the Heliographic Society had seen La
Mission héliographique demonstrate French mastery
of the paper negative and regretted that these images
had not been shown as a whole. Nevertheless the fi ve
photographers were free to sell the prints they had kept
after having fulfi lled the Commission des Monuments
historiques request.
Several other architectural recordings were requested
of photographers during the Second Empire. Between
1854 and 1857 Edouard Baldus followed the Louvre
reconstruction by Hector Lefuel. In the 1860s the city
of Paris hired Charles Marville to photograph the trans-
formations of Paris in the same way the city of Marseille
commissioned Adolphe Terris. The young New Opera
architect, Charles Garnier asked Hyacinthe César Del-
maet and Louis Emile Durandelle to produce images all
the building stages. Afterwards, their photographs were
been published in albums designed by the architect to
promote his work.
In spite of scientists’ enthusiasm, scientifi c photog-
raphy remained sparse during the Second Empire. In
1868 two doctors—Hardy and Montméja—from the
Saint Louis hospital in Paris published the Clinique
photographique de l’hôpital Saint-Louis, which con-
tained their own research on skin diseases. From this,
a photographic studio was opened within the hospital.
The most outstanding medical photographic testimony
was Duchenne de Boulogne’s publication Mécanisme
de la physiologie (1852–1856). Thanks to the photo-
graphic illustrations, he realized a nomenclature of facial
muscles which directly corresponded with the emotional
expressions they caused. The success of this work had
been infl uenced both by the quest of scientifi c objectivity
and by the aesthetic heritage of Charles Le Brun’s Traité
des Passions creating another use for photography for
both scientists and artists.
Although photography’s reception within the
French Fine Arts Academy remained unenthusiastic,
photographers as soon as the mid-1840s, started work-
ing with models. Nude photographs—Etudes d’après
nature—underline the high art/low art relationship
between the Fine Arts and the new invention. Most of
the nude daguerreotypes belonged in erotic or even
pornographic genres, nevertheless, some academic
nude daguerreotypes had certainly been artistically
made. These photographers imitated academic poses
and deliberately eliminated or minimized eroticism. The
line between erotic photography and academic studies
remained diffi cult to establish and to avoid any trouble
with the strict legislation on images galantes circulation
photographers started in 1852 to register their works at
the Imperial Library as studies for artists. The fi rst to
do so was Jacques Antoine Moulin who had run into
legal trouble because of these types of images in 1850.
Poses were closed to academics only and imitated Venus,
Danae, Susan, or nymphs. The woman usually stood
or reclined and was obviously not the ideal feminine
reconstruction the Academy desired. The model was
the only woman and after coming into the studio, took
off her clothes which were deliberately shown on the
photograph—and posed in front of the camera. The
confusion many critics of the time felt when looking at
nude photographs came from the twofold faithfulness
to Le Beau idéal and to realism.
Photography was not allowed at the Ecole des beaux-
arts until the end of the 19th century when Paul Richer
was appointed as anatomy and morphology professor.
Nevertheless many photographers—among them Mou-
lin, Julien Vallou de Villeneuve, Louis Camille d’Olivier,
Auguste Belloc—sold nude studies to artists. Some even
claimed as Gaudenzio Marconi did to be Photographe
offi ciel de l’Ecole des beaux-arts. Several photographers
like Jean-Louis Igout for instance offered catalogs of
poses to artists with both male and female models.
Etudes d’après nature included landscapes, rural
scenes and seascapes. Constant Alexandre Famin made
many countryside views showing animals, farmers, and
wooden houses. Charles Aubry designed in the 1860s
beautiful images of fruits and fl owers to serve as mod-
els for La Manufarcture des Gobelins craftsmen. Since
1877, Adolphe Giraudon sold studies where women
posed as gleaners, goose keepers, shepherdesses. He
also offered photographic reproductions of works of art.
Art reproduction was one of the very fi rst subjects of
photography in France. Nicéphore Niépce made some
engraving reproductions in the 1820s and the fi rst of
Bayard’s direct positive prints showed sculptures in
his studio. At the beginning of the 1850s when paper
photography took over, daguerreotype art reproduction
was one of the main challenges for photographers. To
demonstrate the photographic ability to copy paintings
was the way of gaining a place among fi ne arts. In
1851 Francis Wey underlined photography’s accuracy
compared to engraving interpretation. Photographic
reproduction of paintings was not easy to achieve. The
need for strong and uniform light was diffi cult to achieve
FRANCE
