Édouard Baldus
Édouard Baldus | |
|---|---|
 Édouard Baldus, Self-portrait (c. 1853). | |
| Born | 5 June 1813  Grünebach |
| Died | 22 December 1889 (aged 76) Paris |
| Occupation | Photographer |
Édouard Baldus (5 June 1813, Grünebach,
landscape, architectural
and railway photographer.
Biography
Early life
Édouard-Denis Baldus was born on 5 June 1813 in Grünebach,
lithographer
before switching to photography in 1849.
Career
In 1851, he was commissioned for the
Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann
. The high quality of his work won him government support for a project entitled Les Villes de France Photographiées, an extended series of architectural views in Paris and the provinces designed to feed a resurgent interest in the nation's Roman and medieval past.
In 1855,
Prince Albert as a souvenir of their visit to France that year. The lavishly bound album is still among the treasures of the Royal Library at Windsor Castle
. In 1856, he set out on a brief assignment to photograph the destruction caused by torrential rains and overflowing rivers in Lyon, Avignon, and Tarascon. He created a moving record of the flood without explicitly depicting the human suffering left in its wake.
Innovations in photography
Baldus was well known throughout France for his efforts in photography. One of his greatest assignments was to document the construction of the
panoramic
effect. He was renowned for the sheer size of his pictures, which ranged up to eight feet long for one panorama from around 1855, made from several negatives.
Despite the documentary nature of many of his assignments, Baldus was inventive in overcoming the limitations of the
St. Trophime, in Arles
(1851), he pieced together fragments of 10 different negatives to capture focus in depth in a panoramic view of the interior space and also render detail in the brightly lit courtyard outside.
Death
He died in 1889 in Arcueil, France.
Notable photographs
-
Palais de l'Industrie, c. 1860. -
Notre-Dame, Paris -
Imperial Library of the Louvre -
-
-
Panorama of Paris, about 1860
References
- Daniel, Malcolm, The Photographs of Édouard Baldus, with an essay by Barry Bergdoll. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Montreal, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1994, ISBN 0-87099-715-7.
- Lindlein, Peter, The Secret of Edouard Baldus Revealed, Essay, PDF on www.lindlein.com, 2010
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Édouard Baldus.
- The Photographs of Edouard Baldus article on his photographic style
- Some of Baldus's photographs
- Lee Gallery
- "The Secret of Edouard Baldus Revealed" — with Baldus' photographs.
- The Photographs of Édouard Baldus: Landscapes and Monuments of France
- Édouard Baldus, photographs, Canadian Centre for Architecture (digitized items)
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