933
the last remaining fragment of the French Empire) off
the coast of Newfoundland, he also became the fi rst
person to take photographs of the islands inhabitants
and their villages.
Photographs from the Newfoundland expedition
were printed for Miot by Furne et Tournier of Paris,
and the decision to hand the negatives over to a com-
mercial printing house suggests that they were produced
in quite large numbers. Others were used as the basis
of engravings for Le Tour du Monde over a period of
months in 1863, a part-work published intermittently
until the mid 1870s.
By 1863 he had his fi rst naval command, and al-
most four years later completed a tour of duty which
had taken him to Mexico and Martinique. The period
from 1868 to 1871, now promoted as Admiral Cloué’s
Chief of Staff, saw him circumnavigate South America,
along the way visiting the Marquesas Islands, where he
produced accomplished group portraits of the Royal
Family of Vahitou.
The deands of a blossoming naval career seem to
have limited Miot’s time for photography, the majority
of surviving images covering the period 1858-1875.
By 1881 he had reached the rank of Rear-Admiral, and
Vice-Admiral by 1888. By then he was deskbound in
Paris, retiring from the navy at the age of sixty-fi ve.
A substantial number of his glass plate negatives
survive in the archives of the Ministére de la marine in
Vincennes, France.
John Hannavy
Further Reading
Castelain, Jean-Pierre, and Yves Leroy, Images de Saint-Pierre-
et-Miquelon, Le Havre: le Volcan, 1990.
O’Reilly, P., Les Photographes à Tahiti et leurs oeuvres 1842–
1962, Paris: Société des Océanistes, 1969.
MISONNE, LÉONARD (1870–1943)
Known as one of the most important Belgium photogra-
phers of his time, Léonard Misonne was born in 1870 in
Gilly, Belgium. After being introduced to photography
in 1891 during his engineering studies in Louvain, he
joined the Photo-Club of the city and decided to give
time to arts—painting, music, and photography.
As he became a member of the Association belge de
photographie, he took part of his fi rst exhibition in 1896
with pictures of the country and the peasant life in a style
he developed until his death in the pictorialist aesthetic.
From this time he never gave up exhibitions especially in
Paris, New York, London, Germany, and Austria, which
gave him international acknowledgement.
He obtained the visual effects and atmosphere thanks
to the different processes he used. In a fi rst period, he
printed his photographs on carbon however between
1900 and 1910 he used Fresson paper and then oil print
he learned from Constant Puyo.
Marion PercevalMISSION HÉLIOGRAPHIQUE
In 1851 the Commission des Monuments historiques,
part of the French Ministry of the Interior, sent photog-
raphers on fi ve missions to different regions of France
to make records of historic monuments which were
being restored or were slated for restoration. The build-
ings in question were primarily examples of medieval
ecclesiastical architecture, but Renaissance palaces,
Gallo-Roman structures, and some pre-historic stone
groupings were included. The Mission héliographique,
as the project has come to be called, is one of the fi rst
instances of photography conceived and commissioned
by a government agency for archival purposes. In 1851 it
also constituted one of the largest photographic projects
ever undertaken. The photographers involved include
several great fi gures in the history of photography:
Henri Le Secq, Edouard Baldus, Hippolyte Bayard,
Gustave Le Gray and Auguste Mestral. Le Secq was sent
north-east to Champagne, Lorraine and Alsace. Baldus
was dispatched to Provence by way of Fontainebleau,
Burgundy, and the Dauphiné. Bayard was assigned
Normandy. Le Gray and Mestral were directed to the
center and south-west, and undertook their missions
together: they began in the Loire Valley, circled down
into Languedoc, and returned through Auvergne. Each
photographer was provided with a list of monuments to
record; parts of buildings and even works of art were
often specifi ed on the lists.
Le Secq used Le Gray’s waxed paper negative process
and produced between 150 and 200 negatives, although
the commission acquired a set of only 96 negatives and
prints. Baldus worked with albumenized paper negatives
and made 46 negatives and prints (some of his fi nished
negatives combine multiple spliced views). Le Gray and
Mestral used waxed paper negatives and contributed
120 negatives and prints. Bayard employed glass nega-
tives with Niépce de Saint Victor’s albumen process.
Although Bayard’s photographs were discussed in the
press, it is unclear whether he ever turned them over to
the Commission: only a handful of prints identifi ed as
part of his mission now exist. The other photographers’
negatives (which number close to 300 with duplicates
and panoramas) are housed at the Musée d’Orsay. 165
of the prints survive from the original set, and most of
these are divided between the Musée des Monuments
français and the Photothèque du Patrimoine in Paris.
There is some evidence that the photographers were
selected out of a competition (such a contest is indi-
cated in an 1853 letter written by a student of Baldus).