| Names: | | | Dates: | 1820, 30 August - 1884, 29 July | | Born: | France, Seine-et-Oise, Villiers-le-Bel | | Died: | Egypt, Cairo | | Active: | France / Italy / Egypt |
Early French photographer and developer of new photographic processes. He took photographs of the forests at Fontainebleau, recorded monuments for the ‘Commission des Monuments Historiques‘, took seascapes and military maneuvers (1857), before fleeing his financial troubles and going to live in Egypt.Preparing biographies
Gustave Le Gray had high aesthetic ambitions for photography, creating virtuoso images and in particular dramatic seascapes. Previous photographers had found it difficult to capture skies, because of the different exposures needed to get detail in the sea and the sky. Le Gray solved this by using two different negatives.Le Gray was also one of the first to claim that photographs could be appreciated as works of art in their own right.
This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is included here with permission.
Date last updated: 11 Nov 2011.
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Gustave Le Gray
https://expositions.bnf.fr ...
On-line exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris)
| Sea & Sky: Photographs by Gustave Le Gray, 1856-1857
https://www.vam.ac.uk ...
This exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) examines the composite seascapes of Gustave Le Gray.
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The following books are useful starting points to obtain brief biographies but they are not substitutes for the monographs on individual photographers. |
• Auer, Michele & Michel 1985 Encyclopedie Internationale Des Photographes de 1839 a Nos Jours / Photographers Encylopaedia International 1839 to the present (Hermance, Editions Camera Obscura) 2 volumes [A classic reference work for biographical information on photographers.]
• Beaton, Cecil & Buckland, Gail 1975 The Magic Eye: The Genius of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown & Company) p.49 [Useful short biographies with personal asides and one or more example images.]
• Capa, Cornell (ed.) 1984 The International Center of Photography: Encyclopedia of Photography (New York, Crown Publishers, Inc. - A Pound Press Book) p.297-298
• Lenman, Robin (ed.) 2005 The Oxford Companion to the Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press) [Includes a short biography on Gustave Le Gray.]
• Perez, Nissan N. 1988 Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East 1839-1885 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.) p.190-191 [Short biography on Gustave Le Gray possibly with example plates.]
• Weaver, Mike (ed.) 1989 The Art of Photography 1839-1989 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press) p.459-460 [This exhibition catalogue is for the travelling exhibition that went to Houston, Canberra and London in 1989.]
• Witkin, Lee D. and Barbara London 1979 The Photograph Collector’s Guide (London: Secker and Warburg) p.181-182 [Long out of print but an essential reference work - the good news is that a new edition is in preparation.]
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If there is an analysis of a single photograph or a useful self portrait I will highlight it here. |
| "Since its first discovery, photography has made rapid progress, especially as regards the instruments employed in its practice. It now remains for the artist to raise it to its proper position among the fine arts. (1856)" |
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