The Undersigned Photographer as He Was Before 1848
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
Image: 9 13/16 × 7 15/16 in. (25 × 20.1 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.372.2
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the mid-19th century, photography emerged as a revolutionary medium, French artist Louis-Pierre-Théophile Dubois dehaut captured a poignant self-portrait titledThe Undersigned Photographer as Was Before 1848 (1854–56). This salted paper print from paper negative depicts the photographer his earlier years, offering a reflective nod to the transformative decade before the European revolutions of 1848. Displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gilman Collection, its intimate scale—measuring just under 10 by 8 inches—invites viewers to lean in and ponder personal evolution amid rapid technological and social change. The salted paper process, pioneered by William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1840s, was a cornerstone of early photography, using paper negatives to produce warm-toned, richly detailed prints with a soft, painterly quality. Dubois de Nehaut's mastery of this technique highlights photography's shift from novelty to artistic expression, bridging portrait painting traditions with mechanical precision. The title's retrospective gaze underscores the medium's growing self-awareness, as practitioners like him documented their own likenesses to assert authorship in an era when photography was often dismissed as mere replication. This work exemplifies the cultural fervor of the 1850s, when photographers claimed portraiture as their domain, immortalizing men of intellect and industry. A charming artifact of innovation, it reminds us how one image can encapsulate a lifetime's before-and-after.
About the Artist
Louis-Pierre-Théophile Dubois de Nehaut · 1799–1872
Louis-Pierre-Théophile Dubois de Nehaut (1799–1872) was a French artist and early enthusiast of photography whose career bridged the worlds of traditional draughtsmanship and the new mechanical image-making technologies that transformed visual culture in the nineteenth century. Trained in the conventions of French academic art, he possessed the skills of a practiced draughtsman before turning his ...