Photograp
1849–51
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image: 5 7/8 × 8 7/16 in. (14.9 × 21.5 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 (13)
Art Historical Context
Maxime Du Camp's *Photograp* (1849–51) is a captivating salted paper print, an early photographic medium pioneered by William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1840s. Measuring just 5 7/8 × 8 7/16 inches, this intimate image exemplifies the nascent possibilities of photography during its experimental phase, when artists like Du Camp captured the world with paper negatives and chemical baths to produce soft, tonal prints. As a French writer and photographer, Du Camp traveled extensively in the late 1840s, documenting ancient sites with remarkable precision. Created amid the dawn of travel photography, t...
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...