Given this week's Sepia Saturday photo prompt of a statue, I've decided to feature the work of an amateur photographer who pioneered the use of the calotype photographic process to illustrate travel. During the 1840s most photographic views of landscapes were made using the daguerreotype process introduced and rapidly popularised by Louis Daguerre and others. Daguerreotypes produced landscapes with wonderfully fine detail, but the only way that such one off photographs could be replicated for publication was to transform them into engravings.
Camera style used for calotypes, c.1845
However the calotype process, patented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1841, had a significant advantage in that multiple prints could be produced from a single paper negative. In addition, the ability to prepare several days' worth of negative paper in advance considerably lightened the load of equipment that a photographer had to carry.
Maxime Du Camp (1822-1894)
Maxime Du Camp, a French writer of independent means, learned the calotype process from the innovative and influential Gustave Le Gray in 1848, and late the following year accompanied his friend Gustave Flaubert on a tour of the "Orient." His official mission from the Ministry of Public Education was ostensibly to record the details of monuments and their inscriptions.
Westernmost Colossus of the Temple of Re, Abu Simbel
Salted paper print from paper negative by Maxime Du Camp, 1849-1850
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc # 2005.100.376.149
Both DuCamp and Flaubert wrote journals of their experiences, and excerpts have been used in Steegmuller's Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour. Stegmuller has also published a collection of Flaubert's letters, a portion of which can be read online, and from which I took the following extracts about DuCamp and his photographic exploits.
Cairo, Saturday night, 10 o'clock. December 1, 1849.
Behind the partition I hear the young Maxime, preparing solutions for his negatives.
Vue du grand Sphinx et de la grande pyramide de Menkazeh (Mycerinus)
Salted paper print from paper negative by Maxime Du Camp, Dec 1849
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc # 2005.100.376.149
Max's days are entirely absorbed and consumed by photography. He is doing well, but grows desperate whenever he spoils a picture or finds that a plate has been badly washed. Really, if doesn't take things easier he'll crack up. But he has been getting some superb results, and in consequence his spirits have been better the last few days. The day before yesterday a kicking mule almost smashed the entire equipment.
Intérieur du Temple de Khons, à Karnac, Thèbes
Salted paper print from paper negative by Maxime Du Camp, 1849-1850
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc # 2005.100.376.20
I have seen Thebes: it is very beautiful. We arrived one night at nine, in brilliant moonlight that flooded the columns. Dogs were barking, the great white ruins looked like ghosts, and the moon on the horizon, completely round and seeming to touch the earth, appeared to be motionless, resting there deliberately. Karnak gave us the impression of a life of giants.
Colosse restauré d' Aménophis III, à Thèbes
(Statue vocale ou Colosse de Memnon)
Salted paper print from paper negative by Maxime Du Camp, 1849
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc # 2005.100.376.76
I spent a night at the feet of the colossus of Memnon, devoured by mosquitoes. The old scoundrel has a good face and is covered with graffiti. Graffiti and bird-droppings are the only two things in the ruins of Egypt that give any indication of life.
"Coiffure des Femmes de Nazareth," Palestine
Salted paper print from paper negative by Maxime Du Camp, 1850
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc # 2000.118
After a couple of months in Egypt they moved in to Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, where DuCamp's output was unfortunately far less prolific. Upon his return to France later that year he showed his prints to Blanquart-Everard, who published 125 of them in an elegant edition of approximately 200 leather-bound copies entitled Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie, probably the world's first photographic travel book, as well as individual prints.
The artistry in Ducamp's calotypes is not held in particularly high regard:
Ducamp's photographs ... reflect his working purpose and follow the pattern of earlier documetary etchings and lithographs ... (He) moves from a distant overall view to an closer one, at times honing in on a detail or two, always positoning his subject in the center of the frame. The overall effect is straightforward and banal. The poor quality of photographs printed by DuCamp himself also indicate his lack of concern for aesthetics. The one original aspect of his work is his use of a Nubian man, ostensibly as a measure of scale, but who is often almost invisible, posed in odd nooks and crannies of the ancienty tombs and temples.
Hannavy, 2008
"Vue générale des ruines de Baâlbek, prise à l'Est," Lebanon
Salted paper print from paper negative by Maxime Du Camp, Sep 1850
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc # 2005.100.376.155
On the other hand his pioneering status is widely respected. Many photographers would follow in his footsteps to the Middle East, among them the far more well known Francis Frith, Felix Bonfils, Antonio Beato, and even his former mentor Gustave Le Gray, but DuCamp was among the first, showing what was possible with the crude technology available at the time.
Eastern Facade of the Temple of the Sun, Baalbek, Lebanon
Kodachrome positive transparency, taken 25 May 1997
Photo Copyright © 1997 Brett Payne
From my own experiences of trying to photograph monuments in the desert (see image above), managing the harsh sunlight is very tricky, and I have the greatest of admiration for DuCamp's efforts with rudimentary equipment under very difficult conditions.
References
Ballerini, Julia (2008) DuCamp, Maxime (1822-1894) French photographer and writer,in Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century photography: A-I, index, Volume 1, John Hannavy (ed.), Taylor & Francis, on Google Books.
Meltzer, Steve (2012) The birth of travel photography: Du Camp and Flaubert’s 1849 trip to Egypt, North Africa and the Middle East, on Imaging Resource, 30 October 2012.
Rosenblum, Naomi (1984) A World History of Photography, New York: Abbeville Press.
Stegmuller, Francis (1972) Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour, Boston: Little Brown.
Stegmuller, Francis (ed.) (1979) The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857, Volume 1, on Google Books.
Maxime Du Camp, Wikipedia article
