Gustave Le Gray
Gustave Le Gray (born August 30, 1820 in Villiers-le-Bel , Val-d'Oise , † July 30, 1884 in Cairo ) was a pioneer of photography, especially artistic.
Live and act
Born in the early days as the son of a haberdashery. After finishing school, he studied painting in Paul Delaroche's studio . Together with Frederick Scott Archer, he invented the negative process with the collodion wet plate in 1850 . His photographic work documented his time with captivating realism and impressed citizens and nobility all over Europe. In 1854 he co-founded the Société française de photographie . He fled to Egypt in 1860 because of his debts. At auction, his photographs are among the most expensive in the world.
Le Gray invented the sandwich negative method, in which a positive (photograph) is exposed through two negatives. As a photographer for the French court, he was supposed to take pictures of the fleet. Given the state of photochemistry at the time, it took a long time to take pictures of cloud formations. On the other hand, the illumination of the waves and the surf required a very short exposure time . With the help of the combination of two negatives that were taken with different exposure times, Le Gray achieved dramatic photographs that are reminiscent of the maritime painting of seascapes .
literature
- Sylvie Aubenas: Gustave Le Gray. Phaidon-Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 0-7148-4234-6
- Sylvie Aubenas: Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884). Gallimard, PAris 2002, ISBN 2-07-011718-9
- Eugenia P. Janis: The Photography of Gustave Le Gray. University of Chicago, Press and Art Institute, Chicago, Ill. 1987
- Nils W. Ramstedt: The photographs of Gustave Le Gray. University of California, Santa Barbara, Calif. 1977
- Margret Stuffmann (Ed.): Pioneers of landscape photography . Gustave Le Gray, Carleton E. Watkins. Schmidt, Mainz 1993, ISBN 0-89236-299-5
Web links
- Literature by and about Gustave Le Gray in the catalog of the German National Library
- Gustave Le Gray at photography-now.com
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Le Gray, Gustave |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Le Gray, Jean-Baptiste-Gustave |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Photographer |
DATE OF BIRTH | August 30, 1820 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Villiers-le-Bel , Val-d'Oise |
DATE OF DEATH | July 30, 1884 |
Place of death | Cairo |