Paris in 19th-Century Photographs at Hans P. Kraus Jr.

There are two small exhibits currently on view at Hans P. Kraus Jr. that are well worth a trip to the Upper East Side.

The first show, entitled Paris in 19th-Century Photographs, is a marvelous followup to the Met Museum's recent Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris.  In fact, the Kraus exhibit does have on display two excellent prints by Marville, Rue au Lard, Paris (1865-1869) and Opéra Candélabre à 7 lumières avec globe (c. 1874), that form part of his comprehensive documentation of the modernization of Paris under Napoleon III.  The former is a very atmospheric depiction of one of those dark narrow streets that were demolished by Haussmann while the latter is of an ornate street lamp created for the new Palais Garnier.  Complementing this last work are several studies by Louis-Émile Durandelle of large scale decorative objects meant to be placed within the opera house itself.  Unlike Marville's work, which was photographed in situ, the photographs by Durandelle were completed outdoors in daylight before the ornaments were actually installed, no doubt because the lighting inside the opera house was too dim to be used in any but the longest exposures.  Interestingly, both Marville and Durandelle used the same photographic media - albumen prints made from collodion negatives - indicating how popular these processes had become and how completely they had supplanted the earlier calotype negative and salt print methods invented by Talbot that had been in universal use only a few years before.

That great landmark of Paris, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, is shown here in the works of several photographers.  These include Henri Le Secq, Charles Soulier and Charles Nègre.  (Nègre's 1853 view of Notre Dame is represented by both the waxed paper negative and the salt print made from it.)  Accompanying these is a view of another Parisian church, Talbot's Église de la Madelaine (1843), a varnished salt print from a calotype negative.

The two high points of the present exhibit are the Pavillon Rohan, Louvre, Paris (c. 1857-1859) by Gustave Le Gray and the Facade of a private house in Paris (c. 1855) attributed to Louis-Auguste Bisson and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson (Bisson Fréres).  The Le Gray photograph, a large-format well executed salt print, is remarkable for what it does not portray.  Le Gray's trademark, which distinguishes his work from that of almost all other nineteenth century photographers, is the well exposed sky which dominates virtually all his landscape photography.  He achieved this effect by combination printing, i.e., using one negative for the foreground and another for the sky.  This is most easily accomplished in seascapes where the horizon invariably consists of a straight horizontal line.  In Pavillon Rohan, however, the irregular shape of the Louvre building itself prohibited this practice so that the sky instead appears as a complete blank with no detail visible.  The Bisson print is notable for an entirely different reason.  The image appears at first no more than a straightforward photograph of an upscale Parisian residence shot at street level.  It is only on closer inspection that the viewer notes the "swirling" effect evident in the trees to the side and the main doorway at the center.  It is evident that the print was deliberately manipulated, though how this was achieved during the contact printing process is unknown.

The second exhibit now on display at the Kraus gallery consists of several drawings made by Sir John Herschel with the aid of a camera lucida.  It was Talbot's frustration with this instrument, due to his total inability to draw, that famously led to his invention of photography.  Unlike his associate, Herschel was an excellent draftsman and extremely proficient in working with the device.  And therein lies the irony.  As photo historian Larry Schaaf has noted, Herschel himself could have invented photography before 1839 but for the fact that he preferred the camera lucida whose use necessitated extended scientific observation.  Though Herschel's drawings may not in themselves be great works of art, they thus offer a fascinating footnote to the history of photography.  In addition, they are not only delightful to look at but also provide the viewer with glimpses of nineteenth century Europe that are so detailed they actually rival photographs for accuracy.  In this regard, the best is no doubt Lake of Brienz from Iseltwald (1821) whose careful shading is reminiscent of an aquatint.