937
and the library being advised of the imminent gift in
March 1853, there remains no trace of them.
Montfort served for a time as the Societé he-
liographique’s fi rst President, before being replaced
by Baron Gros, and for its entire existence, the society
continued to enjoy premises within Montfort’s house.
Remarkably, little is known of Benito de Montfort
private or public life, and of his practical involvement
with photography, nothing. However, in his day, as one
of French photography’s earliest benefactors, he was
renowned for his generosity. His importance in the
propagation of the understanding of photography was
acknowledged by le Gray in the concluding paragraphs
of his introduction to his booklet Plain Directions for
Obtaining Photographic Pictures in 1852 (English
language edition Philadelphia: A. Hart, 1853).
John Hannavy
See also: Baldus, Edouard; Fenton, Roger; le Gray,
Gustave; le Secq, Henri; Lacan, Ernest; la Lumière;
Mestral, Auguste; Moigno, Abbé François; and
Société heliographique.
Further Reading
Jammes, André and Eugenia Parry Janis, The Art of French
Calotype, Princeton and Guildford: Princeton University
Press, 1983.
Kamlish, Marion, “Claudet, Fenton and the Photographic
Society”, in History of Photography Vol. 26, No. 4, 2002,
296–306.
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne, Industrial Madness, Commercial
Photography in Paris 1848–1871, New Haven, CT and Lon-
don: Yale University Press, 1994.
MOODIE, GERALDINE (1854–1945)
Canadian photographer
Geraldine Fitzgibbons Moodie was born in Toronto,
Canada, on October 31, 1854, to Agnes Dunbar Moodie,
an illustrator, and Charles Thomas Fitzgibbon, a lawyer
and registrar. In 1870, the family relocated to Ottawa
where Geraldine completed her education. She traveled
to England in 1877, where she met and married her
husband, John Douglas Moodie, who joined the North-
West Mounted Police in 1884. The Moodies relocated
frequently and lived at every major Mounted Police
post in Western Canada, as well as in the Hudson’s Bay
district of the Eastern Arctic. Geraldine Moodie began
to practice photography in the 1890s and she opened her
fi rst photographic studio in Battleford in 1895. While
much of her photographic activity consisted of custom-
ary portrait work, she also photographed the activities
of both the Mounted Police and the Native communities
that surrounded her. Of particular interest are her pho-
tographs of the Inuit people that she encountered in the
Arctic. Her interest in botany also led her to photograph
plant life. John Moodie retired from the Mounted Police
in 1917 and they settled in Maple Creek, later moving to
British Columbia and then to Alberta, where Geraldine
Moodie died on October 4, 1945.
Andrea KordaMORAITES, PETROS (c. 1835–1905)
Petros Moraites was born on the island of Tinos in the
Aegean Sea. He studied painting in Athens but very
soon, fascinated by the new medium, he became in-
volved in photography. In 1859, in collaboration with the
Greek photographer Athanasios Kalfas, he opened his
fi rst studio located at Ermou Street in Athens. The very
same year, the two partners presented photographs at the
1st Olympiad (held in Athens) winning a silver medal
for their photographic reproductions of landscapes. In
September 1860, the partnership ended and Moraites
moved his studio to Aiolou Street. Many important
personalities of the Greek society: politicians, intel-
lectuals, ambassadors, actors including members of the
royal family, as well as ordinary people, posed before
his camera. It is assumed that around 1868, he was ap-
pointed photographer to H.M. the King, a title bestowed
for the fi rst time on a Greek photographer.
Moraites’s depictions have been distinguished for
their “precision in execution, purity of line, harmony
and perfection, without corrections, of photographic
work.” He earned many distinctions in various photo-
graphic exhibitions in Greece [2nd (1870), 3rd (1875)
and 4th (1888) Olympiad held in Athens] and abroad
[Weltausstellung 1873 held in Vienna and Exposition
Universelle (1878) held in Paris]. After his death, his
studio was taken over by his son, Georgios P. Moraites,
who was soon afterwards obliged to sell it to Nikolaos
Pantzopoulos.
Aliki TsirgialouMORAN, JOHN (1831–1903)
American photographer and painter
John Moran, a Philadelphia landscape and cityscape
photographer, was born in 1831 in Bolton, England to
weavers, Thomas Moran Sr. and Mary Higson Moran.
A brother to landscape painters Edward, Peter, and
Thomas, an active member of the Photographic Society
of Philadelphia, and an early proponent of photography
as a fi ne art, Moran began his career in photography
in Philadelphia in 1860. For the next decade, Moran
focused on landscape photographs of the region, in-
cluding notable views of the Wissahickon Valley and
Delaware Water Gap in addition to stereographic views
of Philadelphia landmarks and estates. In 1865, Moran