775
pionneers. Besides, while he was tooking photographs
in Naples in 1852, others were practising elsewhere in
Italy. Indeed, the Cafè Greco in Rome was since 1850
a place for meetings and exchanges between French,
English and Italian calotypists. Maybe Jeuffrain had
met some of them while travelling.
Jeuffrain’s place in the history of primitive photogra-
phy is diffi cult to understand since informations are rare,
and one can only conjecture. He seems to have stayed
in the background—his photos for instance have never
been shown in the numerous exhibitions of the Société
française de photographie—and in the same time, to
have really shared the desires and research of the period,
the dreams of improving and testing the possibilities of
the new invention.
To take an active part in this history implied an ex-
perimental standpoint, standpoint that Jeuffrain seemed
to have adopted from a technical point of view as well
as iconographic or aesthetic. His various experiments
of processes, on different papers, on glass, as his few
publications concerning technical points prove well
such an investment. But the aesthetic concerns appear
to have got the upper hand, since he quickly chose the
exclusive use of calotype. Paper gives images a fi nish
close to drawing, a sfumato effect, which make photo-
graphy a fi ne art object. As some of his contemporary
calotypists, Jeuffrain seems to have been very early
conscient of a specifi city of the medium, and thus, of
photographic images themselves. His calotypes from
Italy and Algeria reveal a new approach of reality, a
more analytic vision of the world, and in the same time,
a taste for the picturesque, for compositions tinged with
nostalgic poetry, where the slightness of light and the
silence of desert spaces sometimes border on oddness.
So has he photographed italian squares and Algerian
streets without any human presence, dramatized by the
chiaroscuro plays and the hazy halo peculiar to calotype.
Jeuffrain’s attitude fi ts in perfectly with a climate of
craze for exotism, travelling, linked to a renewed interest
in past and archeology.
He has otherwise taken some beautiful portraits,
men and women, alone or in group. But above all what
is perhaps the most striking in all these images, is the
recurrence of a nearly spectral motif: many of them
indeed record the trace of a movement—that of a body
moving too fast for the long exposure of calotype, or of
boats in a bay—imposing a ghostly dimension, which
can not only be attributed to the hazards of the shot, but
is rather the sign of a curiosity for a peculiar photogra-
phic effect, and a peculiar aesthetic.
Jeuffrain died in 1896, leaving his son caretaker of
his posterity. As far as one can judge, all his produc-
tion is contained in those few hundred photographs;
as for the rest—private life or others works—it stays
a complete mystery, the same which radiates from
some of his images, as the sign or signature of a secret
personnality.
Amélie LavinBiography
Paul Jeuffrain was born in Tours (France) on 5 March- He might have been travelling for a while in the
merchant navy, then in 1834, he came back to Louviers
to work as a cloth manufacturer. Associated to his own
brother Augustin, he took the direction of the cloth’ fam-
ily factory, “les Etablissements Jeuffrain.” He married
his cousin Aurélie Crémière in 1834, but she died a few
month after the wedding. He married again twice, once
with Elisa Alphonsine Lefort, then in 1856 with Victo-
rine Anna Thenon. He began with photography around
1849, and made then two journeys in Italy and Algeria in
1852 and 1856, from which he took back some beautiful
calotypes. Founding member of the Société française de
photographie, created in 1854, he has never been part of
the numerous exhibitions organized there. Nevertheless
remained he a member of the society until his death in
1896, society which conserves all his calotypes and his
Album since 1914.
See also: Calotype and Talbotype; Société française
de photographie; and Société héliographique
française.
Further Reading
Paul Jeuffrain, Fabricant de drap à Louviers, 1809–1896. Voyages
photographiques (exhibition catalogue), Louviers: Musée de
Louviers, 2001.
Michel Frizot, “Un dessin automatique. La vérité du calotype,” in
Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie, Paris: Bordas, 1994.
André Rouillé, “L’exploration photographique du monde,” in
Histoire de la photographie, Paris: Larousse-Bordas, 1998.
Jean-Claude Gautrand, Le temps des pionniers. A travers les
collections de la Société française de photographie, col.
Photo Poche, no. 30, Paris: Centre National de la Photogra-
phie, 1987.
André Jammes, Eugenia Parry Janis, The Art of French Calotype,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Christiane Roger, Roméo Martinez, I calotipi della societa
francese di fotographia 1840–1880, Venise: Marsilio editori,
1981.JOCELYN, LADY FRANCES (1820–1880)
Aristocratic British woman photographer
Lady Frances Elizabeth Cowper was born in England in
1820, the youngest daughter of Earl and Lady Emelia
Cowper. The Earl died in 1837 when Frances was 17 and
two years later her mother married Viscount Palmerston
who was to become Prime Minister of England. The
Palmerston residences of Broadlands, Panshanger and
Cambridge House became the setting for major social