724
iodide, then washed. Some of his prints made using this
process still survive today and are in very good state,
characterized by a reddish-sepia tonality.
Following the work of Claude Félix Abel Niépce de
Saint-Victor, Humbert de Molard experimented with
albumen on glass in 1848. In 1850, working with Niépce
de Saint-Victor, he arrived at an alternative procedure
which reduced the exposure time by one-third; however,
Humbert de Molard remained unsatisfi ed with the albu-
men process’s lack of rapidity, as well as the diffi culties
inherent in obtaining a even coating of albumen.
In 1851, with the help of a chemist named Aubrée,
Humbert de Molard published a technique for mak-
ing paper negatives capable of much shorter exposure
times, using ammonium acetate as an accelerator in the
developing bath.
In 1854, Humbert de Molard became a founder-mem-
ber of the Société française de photographie [French
Society of Photography]. Through the publication of
the society’s bulletin, he offered technical advice and
comments upon photography’s historical interpretation.
Concerning technical matters, he suggested a way to
render paper negatives translucent using turpentine, ad-
vanced an early bellows-style camera design, and made
improvements to stereoscopic photography. With regard
to the historical interpretation of photography, in 1855,
he insisted that French paper negative photography came
into full fl ower in 1847 with the publication of Guillot-
Saguez’s paper negative procedure, which he viewed as
the real break with Talbot’s primitive calotype technique,
rather than Blanquart-Évrard’s more celebrated proce-
dure. Similarly, in 1860, he defended the primacy of
Gustave Le Gray’s wet-collodion procedure over Scott
Archer’s, dreading the day when French innovation in
the fi eld of making glass negatives should be included
under the heading, “archerotypes.”
In 1864, Humbert de Molard resigned from the ad-
ministrative council of the Société française de photog-
raphy, citing reasons of ill health. He died on 17 March
1874, and was buried in Manerbe.
Alan Greene
Biography
Baron Louis-Adolphe Humbert de Molard was born on
30 October 1800 in Paris. As a young man, he assisted
his uncle in the retouching of wax reproductions of
tropical fl ora. From 1843-1849, he practiced both the
daguerreotype and calotype with profi ciency, making
landscapes and portraits. In particular, his portraits were
characterized by a theatrical quality in which he was
able to obtain relatively candid expressions and poses
from his models. Humbert de Molard was also interested
in chemistry and introduced a number of innovations
to the calotype process, including fi xing without the
use of hypo and adding a mild alkali to the developing
solution in order to accelerate development. In 1854,
he was a founding member of the Société française
de photographie, which counted among its members
several other notable French photographers from the
period. Humbert de Molard died on 17 March 1874 and
was buried in Manerbe, France.
See also: Bayard, Hippolyte; Calotype and Talbotype;
Daguerreotype; and Le Gray, Gustave.Further Reading
Aubrée, “Héliographie sur verre” [Heliography on Glass], La
Lumière [Light], no. 24, 20 July 1851, 95.
Auer, Michèle et Michel Auer, Encyclopédie internationale des
photographes de 1839 à nos jours [International Encyclopedia
of Photographers from 1839 to the Present], 2 vols., Her-
mance, Switzerland: Editions Camera Obscura, c. 1985.
Bacot, E., A. de Brébisson, A., Humbert de Molard: Trois Pho-
tographes en Basse Normandie au XIXe siècle [Humbert de
Molard: Three Photographers in Lower Normandy in the
19th Century], Caen, France: Association Régionale pour
la Diffusion de l’Image, 1989, 81–88, 124–27 (exhibition
catalogue)
Gimon, Gilbert, “Humbert de Molard 1800–1874,” Prestige de
la photographie [Prestige of Photography], no. 5, November
1978, 68–94.
Humbert de Molard, and Aubrée, “Procédé photographique à
base ammoniaque” [Photographic Process Using Ammonia],
La Lumière [Light], no. 10, 13 April 1851, 39–40.
Jammes, André and Eugenia Parry Janis, The Art of French Calo-
type, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Lacretelle, Henri de, “Musée carporamique” [Carporamic Mu-
seum], La Lumière [Light], no. 17, 23 April 1853, 65.HUMOUR
With amazing speed, photography reached the four
corners of the world, and began to make its presence
felt in every branch of human endeavour. It recorded
the milestones of private life, from birth to burial. It
celebrated, or satirized, great fi gures on the public stage.
It could be used to report a war, to further research, to
launch a business or to advertize a product. Something
of this range and versatility was foreseen in the fi rst
notable cartoon about photography, “La Daguerréoty-
pomanie,” by Théodore Maurisset, which appeared in
December 1839.
Although the photographer soon became a familiar
fi gure in the social landscape, the photographic pro-
cess itself remained a puzzle. The baffl ing mystery of
how, from a wooden box, a black cloth, a collection of
chemicals and one man with a stop-watch, an uncannily
lifelike image could be produced formed the subject of
several early cartoons, like one by Gérard Fontallard,
published in 1842. The travails of the amateur enthusiast,
loaded with equipment, lashed by rain, scorched by sun
and mocked by self-appointed critics at every turn , was