Frédéric Martens
Frédéric Martens (born December 18, 1806 in Venice , † January 12, 1885 in Paris ) was a photographer from Württemberg who was born as Friedrich von Martens. He first made daguerreotypes before turning to the collodion process from around 1855 . He worked mainly in France.
Life
The diplomat's son studied at the Art Academy in Venice and then with the engraver Sarasin in Basel . He settled in Paris in the 1830s and was later naturalized, which is why he adapted his name to French. From 1840 he began to develop the new medium of the daguerreotype together with Samuel Heer and Marc Secretan . In 1844 he had a clock-driven camera patented that made an arc of 150 degrees around a curved metal plate - always at the same distance - and thus projected the image onto the image carrier.
Martens was one of the first mountain photographers and lived alternately in Lausanne and Paris. His archives burned down during the Paris Commune in 1871 . He died in Paris in 1885.
plant
Martens was the first to take large panoramic photographs. His first panorama photos were always mirrored horizontally as a result of the Daguerean positive process. Martens became famous for his photo La seine, la rive gauche et l'ile de la Cite, taken from the roof of a pavilion in the Louvre , from 1846. It is more than 40 cm long and has an unusual sharpness for the time. During the world exhibition in London in 1851 , he exhibited a panorama photograph of Mont Blanc , which consisted of fourteen individual photographs.
It was a milestone in photography when he made prints from the twenty-nine negatives and put them together into a panorama made by Jean-Charles Langlois and Léon-Eugène Méhédin - a student of Gustave Le Gray - during the Crimean War and the siege of Sevastopol show in 1855.
Martens later made a name for himself as a portraitist and photographer of returning participants in the Crimean War and as a court photographer for Napoleon III. At the world exhibition in London in 1851 and in Paris in 1855 , his photographs were awarded a medal. His photographs are exhibited in the Musée d'Orsay and the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
literature
- Juliet Hacking (Red.): Photography in het juiste perspectief. - Groningen: Libero, 2012. ISBN 978-90-8998-219-3
- Elisabeth Breguet: 100 ans de photographie chez les Vaudois: 1839–1939. - Lausanne: Payot, 1981. Pages 13-15. ISBN 2-601-00036-8
Web links
- Daniel Girardin: Martens, Friedrich von. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Deux vues panoramiques de Marten de 1867 http://expositions.bnf.fr/universelles/bande/index2.htm - Site de la BNF
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Martens, Frédéric |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Martens, Friedrich; Martens, Friedrich von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French photographer and photography pioneer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 18, 1806 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Venice |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 12, 1885 |
| Place of death | Paris |