Photograp
1849–51
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image: 5 7/16 × 7 1/8 in. (13.8 × 18.1 cm) Mount: 8 3/8 × 11 9/16 in. (21.2 × 29.4 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Museum Purchase, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.967.1 (5)
Art Historical Context
Maxime Du Camp's *Photograp* (1849–51) is a captivating salted paper print, measuring 5 7/16 × 7 1/8 inches, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gilman Collection. Created during the dawn of photography, this work exemplifies the medium's early potential to document distant wonders with unprecedented detail and intimacy. Du Camp, a writer and traveler, produced this image amid the 1840s photographic revolution, likely during his formative expeditions to the Middle East. The salted paper process—coating paper with salt and sensitizing it with silver nitrate—yielded soft, warm-toned prints from...
About the Artist
Maxime Du Camp · 1822–present
Maxime Du Camp (1822–1894) was a pioneering French photographer and writer whose adventurous spirit and technical innovation bridged literature and visual art during the mid-19th century. Born in Paris on February 8, 1822, to a prosperous family—his father a successful surgeon—Du Camp received a solid bourgeois education at the Collège Bourbon (now Lycée Condorcet), where he cultivated interests i...