Edouard Baldus
Édouard Baldus (born June 5, 1813 as Eduard Baldus in Grünebach , † December 22, 1889 in Arcueil - Cachan ) was a Franco-German photographer. He is one of the pioneers of photography and is considered the first professional architecture photographer. His work Chemin de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée from 1863 is one of the most important photo books in history. In addition, in 1855 he invented his own method of photo engraving (héliogravure) , which became the basis for extensive publishing activities.
Life
Growing up in the Rhineland and fleeing justice to France
He was born on June 5, 1813 under the name Eduard Baldus as the son of Johann Peter Baldus and his wife Elisabeth in Grünebach (at the time the Duchy of Nassau, now Rhineland-Palatinate). Nothing is known about Edward's childhood and youth in Grünebach, whose everyday life was shaped by agriculture and the Grünebacher Hütte and until recently, "the first 25 years of his life were considered a mystery."
Only recent research by Peter Lindlein has shed light on this darkness and at least partially revealed Baldus' long-kept secret: In the early 1830s he was a soldier (Bombardier) in the Prussian army in the Rhine province in Cologne. There he came into conflict with the law, was accused of "making and distributing false cash register instructions" (counterfeiting), evaded the investigation that had been initiated against him and the threatened death penalty by fleeing and was therefore registered in the entire Rhine province in the spring of 1835 searched,. Eduard Baldus finally fled to France. What he took with him was his first practical experience in printing technology.
Path to becoming a successful photographer in France
In 1838 Eduard Baldus lived in Paris. He adapted his first name to the French spelling "Édouard". He wanted to study art, but quickly switched to practice. He told of his exhibitions in Antwerp, of a tour of the USA as a portrait painter, but there is no evidence of this today. Presumably this made up résumé was given by him to cover up his past in Germany. This is also supported by the fact that Baldus made confusing information about his origin: Sometimes he named Germany, sometimes France and sometimes the USA as the country of his birth, and he gave 1815 as the year of birth.
From 1841 on, he regularly submitted paintings to the annual Paris Art Salon for ten years. His pictures - often with religious motifs - were mostly rejected. In spring 1845 he married 22-year-old Elisabeth-Caroline Etienne, who was ten years his junior. Two daughters and a son quickly made the couple a family that had to be fed. His wife's dowry was supplemented by his mother-in-law and the money was invested in government bonds so that the young family could make a living from the interest. Baldus finally realized that it was time again to take a different path.
In his attempt to reinvent himself, he came up with an invention that had only just found a wider public when he first arrived in Paris: photography. Edouard Baldus learned this new technique in 1848, then devoted himself fully to this activity and in 1849 traveled to the south of France as a photographer.
The pictures he brought with him were recognized. In 1851 he became a founding member of the Société Héliographique, the first photographic society. Together with Hippolyte Bayard , Gustave Le Gray and Auguste Mestral, he was entrusted in the same year by the Commission for the Preservation of Monuments with the Mission Héliographique , which had the task of photographing France's historical buildings. He traveled to Fontainebleau, Burgundy and Provence, among other places. His photos impressed with their clarity, beauty and size, the latter because he was probably the first to combine several negatives into one print. Further large government contracts were the result, and after just a few years he was considered the leading architectural photographer in France.
He exhibited his pictures at the Exposition Universelle from May 1855. Even during the exhibition, he got a lucrative major order: Baron James de Rothschild , Europe's leading banker and owner of Compagnie des chemins de fer du Nord , commissioned him a photo album as a gift Rothschilds for from this northern railway and the places of the route Queen Victoria to make . Baldus got to work, traveled by train with King Napoleon III. and Queen Victoria, took pictures during the Queen's visit and combined them with photos from his portfolio to create an album with fifty large prints. The luxurious red leather album entitled Visite de Sa Majeste la Reine Victoria et de Son Altesse Royale le Prince Albert 18-27 aout 1855; Itineraire et vues du Chemin de fer du Nord had Rothschild handed over to Queen Victoria. This magnificent volume is now in the collection of Queen Elizabeth II in the royal archives at Windsor Castle .
Photographer, inventor, printer and publisher
On behalf of the government, Baldus captured the great floods of the Rhone in pictures (1856) and took photos on behalf of Napoleon III. built the new Louvre brick by brick (1855–1858) and was considered one of France's leading photographers. In June 1856, his application for French citizenship was approved on the basis of ministerial reports attesting to his moral and political integrity. His work for the government and for the documentation of national culture was widely recognized: In August 1860, Baldus received the order of “Chevalier” of the Legion of Honor for his contributions to the advancement of the art of photography, as a practitioner and inventor. This successful professional phase was overshadowed by the death of his wife, who died in the spring of 1858 at the age of less than 35.
In 1861 he was commissioned by the Compagnie des chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée (PLM) to photograph their line and buildings, and Baldus' second major photo work about the railroad was created. In a certain way, this railway plant set the course, signifying a conclusion and a new beginning, because his interest in the business prospects of photography seemed to grow even more when he worked for the PLM company.
Baldus had had a small business on rue d'Assas for years, employing a dozen people and assistants. He also sold his work in half of Europe, but the rapid development of photography and lower production costs opened up interesting new business opportunities. He produced series of Parisian recordings and made stereoscopic recordings in larger editions, with mixed print quality.
As early as 1855 he had developed his own method for photo engraving , in which the pigment print is transferred to a metal plate, dusted with asphalt and then etched, and the images are then reproduced in a press using this printing plate. Baldus' method was precise and flexible, allowing both gravure and letterpress printing . He did not apply for a patent for his invention, but rather kept the details of the process he called “Héliogravure” as a trade secret.
He developed the process further, working with chromium salt and a ferric chloride solution, which became the basis of his new job as a printer and publisher. In the late 1860s, for example, large-format views of his photographs of the architecture and ornaments of the Louvre and Palais des Tuileries appeared shortly before these buildings were damaged or destroyed in the uprising of the Paris Commune. But in this way he also published collections of engravings of the works of the architect Androuet du Cerceau and the engraver Raimondi, as well as his own photographs in the series “Principaux Monuments de la France” in the 1870s.
Bankruptcy and end of life
The business success of the photographer, chemist and publisher did not keep pace with the scope of the activities. After the production of his recordings of the new city hall Hôtel de Ville (1882-1884) he got increasingly into financial difficulties. He finally had to file for bankruptcy in 1887. A little later Edouard Baldus died at the age of 76 on December 22, 1889 in Arcueil-Cachan in the south of Paris.
Motives and way of working
Genres
An essential leitmotif of his photographs was the tension between landscape and man-made works. The diverse genres also determined his public and private clients:
- Architecture, from historical monuments (Mission Heliographique 1851) to modern buildings (Hotel du Ville 1884), the latter including the construction process.
- Railway lines and structures, as in the railway albums for Baron Rothschild and the PLM. In Baldus' pictures, however, neither the railroad as a means of transport nor travel are directly thematized and depicted, because the photos occasionally show individual freight wagons, but no locomotives and trains, not even the steam of a locomotive.
- Arts and crafts, as in the recordings documenting the sculptures in the Louvre and Tuileries.
- The fact that Baldus had captured the award-winning cattle, sheep and pigs in photos at an agricultural exhibition in 1854 on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture is likely to have been completely forgotten until it was mentioned in Malcolm Daniel's essay.
- Again and again, Baldus understood how to create and use free space for his commissioned work. This is how the near-natural landscape photographs, such as those in the Auvergne, were created.
- Less well-known genres in his work are the recordings of an excursion by an elegant company to a castle park (Château de la Faloise, 1857) and his portraits of artists and children, some of which have only survived in very small numbers.
With this range of genres it becomes clear that defining Baldus as a pure landscape or architectural photographer would ignore important and significant parts of his work.
Architecture: Arles - Theater Romain, c.1860
Railway: Vienne. Basement 1861
Arts and crafts: Bas Relief of the Arc de l'Etoile, 1856
Landscape photographs: Rocher de St. Michel au Puy, 1854
Social life: Château de la Faloise, 1856
Portraits: Pierre Jean David d'Angers , French sculptor, 1853
Photo and recording technology
In the years from 1849 to 1857 Baldus made calotypes , salt paper prints from paper negatives. He soon used his own improvements to the wax paper process to create more detailed prints. Towards the end of these years he finally started to use glass negatives to make his salt paper prints because of their higher precision . From 1858 he finally also used the collodion process for albumin prints , which had been used with great success by his contemporaries such as Gustave LeGray for a while.
Baldus worked with large formats from the start. Since enlargements were not yet possible at the time and the negatives determined the format of the pictures, he used very large negatives (usually 35 × 45 cm) to create expressive and detailed pictures. However, this was not enough for him: during the Mission Heliographique in 1851, he combined several negatives into large-format images. According to Mondenard, his photo of the Saint-Etienne Cathedral in Auxerre is considered the first known montage of negatives. At the world exhibition in 1855 , Baldus presented a 130 cm view of the Lac de Chambon. In order to avoid perspective distortions, he preferred to assemble individual negatives and later only used the special panorama camera developed by Félix-Napoléon Garella for a short time . Baldus documented the Avignon floods in 1856 with a 250 cm wide panorama picture made up of seven individual photos.
He also uses the assembly technique to create distortion-free recordings in tight spaces. For the image of the ' Cloister of Saint Trophime', parts from ten negatives were put together. But he didn't just create his pictures through montage, he also retouched . In doing so, the painter not only occasionally added a few clouds or even a river bank, but the photographer removed trees and buildings that were annoying to him in order to better bring the essentials into the picture and view.
With his many years of experience as a painter, albeit not one that was successful, Baldus knew how to choose the position, perspective and section of the photograph. He also gave space to the foreground in frontal shots, allowing the viewer to place the motif in the space and the man-made buildings in the landscape. The people themselves appear in his landscape and architectural pictures mostly only for size comparison. The image geometry of the recordings was largely determined by the lines of the rivers, railroad lines and building outlines and structures, which Baldus was able to skillfully use to guide the viewer.
His photos bring light into the dark, as he often worked with the soft light of the morning or late afternoon in order to reduce contrasts and show detailed penumbra. In other shots he used the vertical midday sun to avoid any shadow. Gradually, Baldus developed his own style: large and clear, but detailed recordings of extraordinary precision, with a 'preference for order and standstill', and thus monumental and timeless images.
Montage: Cloister of Saint Trophime in Arles 1851, composed of parts from ten different negatives
Panorama: Lyon during the floods in 1856, image width 89 cm
Lines: Donzère, from the album Chemin de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée
Foreground to create symmetry: Pont du Gard
Achievements and importance for photography
Technical innovations
Baldus invented a special wax paper process for paper negatives and positives, which he also published. He himself worked with this method for over a decade and achieved excellent results that set standards in precision and clarity. However, the process itself was not widely used, partly because it only gave practical lessons to selected students.
His second technical invention was his method of making heliogravures in 1855, which he did not patent. However, the results were also presented internationally and greatly appreciated. These photogravures became the basis of Baldus' entrepreneurial activity; however, its end also marked the end of the proceedings.
Both innovations set standards for the quality of photographic products, but after a few years they were overtaken by other technical processes and remained short side lines in the technical development of photography.
Artistic achievements
His contemporaries, above all the editor-in-chief of the magazine 'La Lumière' Ernest Lacan, repeatedly praised Baldus' works for their technical precision and great artistic charisma. If Baldus was long forgotten, this appreciation is again valid today, which proves his position in the history of photography: Baldus created the paradigm of the documentary style of this era through his conception of the pictorial design and his feeling for the subtleties of light, whereby the pictures give pleasure beyond their immediate display purpose.
Today his album photographique du Train Impérial from 1855 and the band Chemin de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée from 1863 are considered milestones in corporate photography .
Major innovative contributions by Baldus to photography as art, which also make him one of the most important pioneers of photography today, were:
- Baldus shaped the classic style of architectural photography.
- He was probably the first to use the montage of negatives, be it as a large panorama or to avoid perspective distortions in confined spaces.
- He created a new art of photographic documentation (Louvre, floods) and established the photo archive as a new dimension of art (Louvre).
However, the indirect artistic effects of his work are also important, namely as a publisher through the publication of his works, especially those of architecture. This is particularly true of his volumes with the building details of the Louvre, which at the time served as templates and model books for architects all over the world.
Post fame
The family name Baldus is still common in his homeland, but hardly anyone associates it with a great photographer. In France, too, Baldus, the first professional architectural photographer, the photographer of railways and progress, had long disappeared from view. But since the early 1980s, Baldus and his photographs have been attracting increased interest again - probably also a reflection of the 'New Topography' in photography of the 1960s and 1970s. Néagu and Heilbrun see in him the very first modern photographer, as his pictures are the birth of modern perception and took the albums with his series of preferred motifs, such as the railway bridges, the series concepts of August Sanders and the Bechers by half or a whole Century ahead. Masterpieces like his “Minotaure” are reminiscent of Atget or Friedlander today , but they were recorded many decades before them.
In 1977 Baldus's photographic works were shown at documenta 6 in Kassel in the famous photography department , which presented the connection to contemporary art in the context of “ 150 years of photography ”.
But it is only the meticulous work of Malcolm Daniel who - initially with his doctoral thesis - later as curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, systematically and thoroughly examined the life, work and work of Baldus, and it did so with major exhibitions at the MET (1994), in Montreal and Paris (1995) as well as an extensive volume of 300 pages.
In 2006, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger included Baldu's album "Chemin de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée" from 1863 in their canon of the most important photo books in history. Such appreciation is also reflected in the high prices of Baldus' original photos in the art market and at international auctions.
Works
Photo series
- Mission Héliographique, 1851, 71 photos still available
- Villes de France Photographiées, 1853–60, 69 photographs
- Inondations du Rhône à Lyon et Avignon, 1856, 25 recordings
Photo albums
- Album photographique du Train Impérial - Album de Chemin de fer du Nord. Ligne de Paris à Boulogne. Commissioned work for Baron Rothschild (Queen Victoria Album) with 50 recordings. Paris 1855. There are variants with smaller formats and slightly changed titles from later years, but not all of the pictures are from Baldus.
- Réunion des Tuileries au Louvre. 1852-1857. Recueil de photographs publié par ordre de S. Exc. Mr. Achille Fould, Ministre d'Etat et de la Maison de l'Empereur. Paris 1857. 4 volumes with a total of more than 2000 recordings by Baldus. Edition 36
- Chemin de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée, Paris 1863. Commissioned work for the Compagnie Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée (PLM). Album with 69 recordings. Edition of 40 (estimated by Daniel), of which 11 still exist.
Printed publications with photographs of Baldus
- Vitraux de l'Église Sainte Clotilde. Composés et dessinés by Auguste Galimard; et photographiés par Edouard Baldus, Paris 1853. 11 photos by Baldus
- Histoire de Artistes Vivantes, Paris 1853/54. Contains three portrait photos created by Baldus (Chenavard, David d'Angers, Jeanron) and 9 photos of paintings.
- Palais du Louvre et des Tuileries. Motifs de décorations tirées des constructions exécutées au Nouveau Louvre et au Palais des Tuileries, sous la dir. / de MH Lefuel, ...; héliogravures par Baldus; Paris E. Baldus (17 rue d'Assas) 1869-1871; 2nd edition 1874. 300 photogravures
- Palais de Versailles, Paris E. Baldus (17 rue d'Assas), around 1870; 2nd edition published by A. Morel in 1877. 100 heliogravures
- Les Monuments Principaux de la France. Reproduits en Heliogravure par E. Baldus. Paris E. Baldus (17 rue d'Assas) around 1870, 2nd edition A. Morel Paris 1875. 45 of 60 heliogravures published.
- Reconstruction de l'Hotel de Ville de Paris par T.Ballu et Deperthes, Paris 1884, variants of 60-100 heliogravures
Printed publications with heliogravures. Prepared and published by Baldus
- Recueil d'Ornements, Paris 1866, 100 plates
- Œuvre de Marc-Antoine Raimondi, Paris 1867, 40 plates
- Œuvre de Jaques Androuet dit Du Cerceau, Paris (1869)
literature
- Malcolm R. Daniel: Edouard-Denis Baldus and the Chemin de Fer du Nord Albums . In: IMAGE Vol.35 Nos.3-4, p 3-38, George Eastman House / Rochester
- Malcolm R. Daniel: The Photographs of Édouard Baldus , with an essay by Barry Bergdoll. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.
- Françoise Heilbrun, Geneviève Bresc-Bautier: Le photographe et l'architecte. Edouard Baldus, Hector-Martin Lefuel et le chantier du nouveau Louvre de Napoléon III . (Exhibition catalog). Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris 1995
- Anne de Mondenard: La mission heliographique: Cinq photographes parcourent la France en 1851 , Center de monuments nationaux, 2002
- John Hannavy (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography , New York 2007, Article Edouard Baldus pp. 107-112
- James A. Ganz: Edouard Baldus at the Chateau de la Faloise , New Haven: Yale, 2008
- Peter Lindlein: The Secret of Edouard Baldus . Digital Betzdorf Library 2010 (digital version ; PDF; 8.3 MB)
- Peter Böcking: From Eduard to Édouard. From Grünebach to Paris: The adventurous journey through life of the photo artist Baldus In: Siegener Zeitung from November 20, 2010
- Catalog for documenta 6: Volume 1: Painting, sculpture / environment, performance; Volume 2: photography, film, video; Volume 3: Hand drawings, utopian design, books; Kassel 1977 ISBN 3-920453-00-X
- Honnef, Klaus: 150 years of photography (extended special edition of Kunstforum International: 150 years of photography III / photography at documenta 6 , volume 22); Mainz, Frankfurt am Main (two thousand and one) 1977
Web links
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Biography and pictures of Édouard Baldus
- Now at the MET: The Secret of Édouard Baldus Revealed, by Malcolm Daniel
Individual evidence
- ↑ Malcolm R. Daniel: The Photographs of Édouard Baldus , New York 1994, p. 18
- ^ "His first 25 years are a mystery." - Lenman, Robin - The Oxford Companion to the Photograph, Oxford University Press 2005, p. 62
- ↑ Peter Lindlein: The secret of Edouard Baldus . Digital Betzdorfer Library 2010 http://www.betzdorf-sieg.de/heimat/Baldus/DasGeheimnisdesEdouardBaldus-PeterLindlein_2010DBB.pdf (link not available) as well as the response to it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) Now at the MET: The Secret of Édouard Baldus Revealed ( Memento of November 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) and in the press: Peter Böcking - From Eduard to Édouard. From Grünebach to Paris: The adventurous journey through life of the photo artist Baldus ; In: Siegener Zeitung from November 20, 2010
- ^ Official Journal of the Government of Aachen, from Thursday, February 26, 1835 (Item 11), p. 158
- ↑ See: Malcolm R. Daniel: The Photographs of Édouard Baldus , p. 73.
- ^ Center Historique des Archives Nationales (Plouvier, Martine) - Dossiers de Proposition de Légion d 'Honneur; Inventaire-index alphabétique des articles F70 115 à 119, Paris 2005. Incidentally, Baldus' year of birth is given as 1820 here.
- ↑ Clotures de faillites: Baldus - Av. De Breteuil, 16, 21 juin 1887, In: Archive Commerciale de la France 1887, (20.7.)
- ↑ See also: Rocío Robles Tardío - Pintura de humo, Madrid 2008, p. 16f. Contrary to what Robles said, people can occasionally be found in the pictures of the train stations.
- ↑ Malcom R. Daniel, The Photographs ... p. 36
- ↑ See also the comment from the Orsay Museum , which classifies the portraits as 'masterpieces of photography'.
- ↑ See Mondenard, La mission heliographique, p. 88. It is therefore not Gustave Le Gray who invented this technique of combining negatives, as is often claimed elsewhere. From the mid-1850s onwards, LeGray was probably the first to have systematically used negatives with shorter exposures for the part of the sky in landscape photography, for example in 1856 for the Brig upon the Water photograph , which was shown at the London photo exhibition ( Combination Printing ).
- ↑ See: Ernest Lacan - Esquisses photographiques à propos de l'Exposition universelle et de la guerre d'Orient. Paris 1856, p. 80; Gernsheim, Geschichte der Photographie, p. 384. The photo has not been preserved
- ↑ See in particular: Malcolm R. Daniel: The Photographs .. , p. 21f
- ↑ Malcolm Daniel - The Photographs, p. 69
- ↑ Malcolm Daniel - The Photographs, p. 49
- ↑ BALDUS Edouard, Concours de Photographie. Mémoire déposé au secrétariat de la société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale., Paris, Victor Masson, 1852, 32 p.
- ↑ See also: Ernest Lacan - Revue Photographique, La Lumière, December 17, 1853, pp. 202f.
- ↑ Malcolm R. Daniel - The Photographs ..., p. 20
- ↑ For the biography of Ernest Lacan see: Ernest Lacan
- ↑ See for example: Ernest Lacan - Esquisses photographiques à propos de l'Exposition universelle et de la guerre d'Orient. Paris 1856; P. 27: “He is a painter who knows how to choose his point of view and who directs our gaze.” (Il est peintre, il sait choisir les points de vue et diriger votre admiration. Chacune de ses épreuves es un poeme.) And further P. 79ff: “He understands broad perspectives and horizons. With his lens he records spaces that the eye can hardly measure. ”(M. Baldus a le secret des grandes perspectives et des lointains horizons. Son objectif embrasse des espaces que l'œil peut à peine mesurer.)
- ↑ Rosenblum, Naomi - A world history of photography, 2004, p. 157.
- ↑ See on this: Malcolm R. Daniel - The Photographs ..., p. 91; Parr, Martin and Gerry Badger - The Photobook: A History, Vol. II, London 2006, p. 180. However, the pioneer of corporate photography was Phillip Henry Delamotte with his Photographic View of the Progress of the Crystal Palace from 1851
- ↑ Malcolm R. Daniel - The Photographs ..., p. 97
- ↑ See Mondenard, La mission heliographique, p. 88
- ↑ Malcolm R. Daniel - The Photographs ..., p. 59
- ↑ Not only many libraries, but also well-known architects such as Paul Wallot , the master builder of the Reichstag building in Berlin, owned the three volumes of the Palais du Louvre et des Tuileries.
- ↑ Neagu, Philippe and Francoise Heilbrun - Baldus, paysages, architecture; in: Photographies, Spring 1983, pp. 55-77
- ↑ Perego, Elvire - The City Machine. Architecture and industry; in: Frizot, Michel (Ed.) - New History of Photography, Cologne 1998, p. 215
- ↑ Illustration see: Edouard Baldus Photo Gallery
- ^ Malcolm R. Daniel: The Photographs of Édouard Baldus , with an essay by Barry Bergdoll. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.
- ^ Parr, Martin, and Gerry Badger - The Photobook: A History, Vol. II, London 2006, p. 180.
- ↑ The record was achieved by a photograph attributed to Baldus (Facade d'un hotel particulier parisien, vers 1855) with a hammer price of EUR 300,000 at a Sotheby auction in Paris on March 21, 2003
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Baldus, Édouard |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Baldus, Eduard (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-French photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 5, 1813 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Grünebach |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 22, 1889 |
| Place of death | Arcueil-Cachan |