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Biography
Hermann Heid was born on 17 December 1834 in
Darmstadt (Germany). He studied chemistry in Gießen
and Heidelberg. After graduation he studied photog-
raphy at the technical school of Julius Schnauss in
Jena, then moved to Austria and worked in Vienna
as a technical manager with Emil Rabending. A few
years later he created a company, which opened an
additional local branch in Pest (today a quarter of Bu-
dapest) around 1865/1866 with Ferdinand Ronninger.
Their line was taken over in 1867 by Gyoergy Kloesz,
previously coworker of the Viennese of principal fi rm.
The enterprise had traded since 1874 under “Dr. Heid,
photographic-artistic institute.” Since 1875 Heid had
in addition his own production of collodio-wool, and
since 1880 of gel drying plates. In 1861 he was among
the fi rst members of the photographic society, and in
1882 promoted the establishment of the association
of photographic coworkers to Vienna. Heid took part
in many larger national and international exhibitions
(1864, 1875, 1881 exhibitions of the photographic
society in Vienna; 1865–7. Exhibition of the Société
française de photography; 1868 exhibition Hamburg
photographic association; 1871 opening exhibition
in the new building of the Austrian museum for art
and industry; 1873 Viennese world exhibition; 1878
Paris world exhibition; 1891 international exhibition
of artistic photographs in the Austrian museum for art
and industry).
Collections that possess copies of his photography
include: in Vienna, Vienna museum; Technical museum
Vienna; Photo collection of the Albertina (continuous
loans of the higher graphic federal bundes-Lehr and
laboratory); Museum for applied art. In Berlin, Univer-
sity of the arts Berlin, university archives. In Budapest,
Historical photo archives of the Hungarian national
museum. In Paris, Bibliothèque national de France,
Estampes.
See also: Austro Hungarian Empire, excluding
Hungary; Architecture photography; Industrial
photography; Artist studies
Further Reading
Starl, Timm, Biobibliografi e zur Fotografi e in Österreich 1839
bis 1945, 1998ff. (wird regelmäßig aktualisiert) http://alt.
albertina.at/d/fotobibl/einstieg.html.
Starl, Timm, Lexikon zur Fotografi e in Österreich 1839 bis 1945,
Wien: Album, Verlag für Photographie, 2005.
Le Pelley Fonteny, Monique, Adolphe & Georges Giraudon. Une
bibliothèque photographique, Paris: Somogy, 2005.
Kohlhuber, Daniela, Dr. Hermann Heid (1834–1891). Von der
Atelierfotografi e zur Freilichtaufnahme, Diplomarbeit, Inns-
bruck 2005.
HELIOGRAVURE
Name given by Nicéphore Niépce (1765–1833), in
France, to the fi rst photomechanical process by which
reproductions of drawings and engravings could be
made. Beginning in 1822, he succeeded in making
copies of images by contact printing documents on
thin layers of asphalt coated on glass, stone and later
on copper and pewter.
In 1822, Niépce made a successful reproduction—a
portrait of Pope Pius VII—on glass. No acid etching was
used at the time. The following year he experimented
on stone, with the help of a lithographer in Dijon. In
1825 he succeeded in exposing and engraving a copper
plate. This was the forerunner of photogravure as we
know it today.
Niépce has long been recognized as the inventor of
the fi rst photographic process capable of producing
a permanent photographic image. His oldest extant
camera made photograph was made in the summer of
1827 (Marignier, 1999) and is now in the Harry Ransom
Center at the University of Texas, U.S.A. This photo-
graph, however, is not the oldest extant photographically
produced image.
Some years ago the well-known Paris collector and
historian André Jammes had the opportunity to acquire
an unassuming reproduction of a 17th century Flemish
print together with an extensive series of autograph
manuscript letters by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and his
son Isidore (1795–1868). The correspondence included
a detailed description of the processes with which
Niépce eventually achieved his historic discovery. The
date of this heliogravure was 1825. On March 21st,
2002, this photomechanical reproduction was sold to
an anonymous telephone bidder at a Sotheby’s auc-
tion in Paris for nearly half a million euros. The price
was relatively low because the French government had
made it clear that the print was considered a National
Treasure and would never be allowed to leave France.
After the sale the French National Library used its right
of preemption and acquired the print for the cost of the
highest bid.
The term heliogravure referred originally to the as-
phalt or bitumen process. For a brief period after 1839
several experimenters tried to obtain printing plates
from etched daguerreotypes but this never proved vi-
able. Niepce de Saint-Victor (1805–1870), the cousin
of Nicéphone Niépce, resumed the latter’s experiments
in 1853 but could only succeed in reproducing line il-
lustrations. Many years later, in 1883, he presented to
the public heliogravures with a full scale of tones, made
from photographic negatives and printed on steel plates
with the help of an intaglio press.
The secret to reproducing the tonal elements came
from the old aquatint etching process invented in the