The invention of photography was heralded in 1839 in Paris with the debut of the daguerrotype - a unique photograph produced on a silver-covered copper plate. Praised for its veracity, accuracy and its astonishingly sharp detail, the daguerrotype captured the collective imagination. Over the next half-century, photography developed rapidly, progressing from a cottage industry to a semi-industrialized business, with the phenomenal growth of portrait studios marking the medium's popular success. Photography also came to be widely used for documentary purposes such as topographical surveys, scientific investigations, and reporting, while other users championed it as an artistic practice. With the advent of the print on paper, photographic images became truly multiple and, through new methods of printing and distribution, were soon spread around the world. Through a wide range of visual material and an informative text, this study by conservator Quentin Bajac covers these developments and many others, technical and creative, in the remarkable early years of photography.

The Invention of Photography (New Horizons) /anglais

Bajac, Quentin

Thames&Hudson

Firmly rooted in its time and place, timeless in its appeal: Brassai ’s night photography of Paris assures his place among the great photographers of the twentieth century Brassai (1899–1984) was the first and is still the most famous photographer to chronicle Paris after dark. Born in Hungary, he came to the French capital in 1924, working first as a journalist and then embracing photography, but it was the Paris of the 1930s that forms the bedrock of his body of work. Walking the city’s streets at night, Brassai captured a previously unseen world on camera. He shows us every face and every facet, from tough guys and showgirls to prostitutes and pleasure-seekers, from the bustling cafés and dance halls to the stillness of deserted streets and mist-shrouded monuments. Through his eyes, Paris becomes a world of shadows, in which light, the prerequisite for any photograph, is reduced to dimly lit windows, streetlamps in the fog, or reflections on a rain-soaked pavement. This book brings together some of the best-known images from Brassai’s classic Paris After Dark and The Secret Paris of the 30’s, showcasing them alongside previously unpublished photos and archive material. It places his work in its historical and artistic context, analyzing the unique nature of his photographic vision: part reportage, part social document, part poetic exploration. 296 illustrations, 214 in duotone

Brassaï: Paris Nocturne

Arts & Photography

AUBENAS, SYLVIE

Photography & Video

Surveys the early of history of photography, including the debut of the daguerreotype in 1839 in Paris, the growth of portrait studios in the mid-1800s, and the spread of the photographic image in the late 1800s.

The Invention of Photography (Discoveries) (Harry Abrams)) (Discoveries Series)

Harry N. Abrams

A comprehensive reference traces the history of photography from the invention of the daguerreotype in 1829 to the breakthroughs in digital photography today, covering such key themes as portraits, still lifes, photojournalism, and NASA images while exploring the ways that the use of pictures has influenced public perspectives. 12,500 first printing.

The Abrams Encyclopedia of Photography

Caujolle, Christian

OBJECT:PHOTO contains brilliant photographs from the first half of the twentieth century--the most dynamic and radical period in the development of modern photography--but it explores them using a new approach: instead of privileging the content of the images, it shifts the dialogue to the photographic object--the actual, physical thing created by a particular artist using particular techniques at a precise time, surviving into the present with a unique history. This perspective provides new insight into the singular nature of each work and the density of references that each contains while also acknowledging the cultural importance of photography from the interwar period--as well as the rarity of its best examples. Recognition of this importance informed The Museum of Modern Art’s acquisition, in 2001, of the 341 modernist photographs that now constitute the Thomas Walther Collection, each presented in this volume in special 5 color reproductions and accompanied by an unprecedented degree of detailed information, constituting new standards for the field. OBJECT:PHOTO represents the culmination of four years of research by the Museum’s Departments of Photography and Conservation and by more than two dozen visiting scholars, demonstrating in its varied voices their remarkable collaborations with the works and with each other. Essays by historians, curators and conservators consider such topics as the political and cultural pressures shaping the formation of the photographic avant-garde in Europe, the reception of modernist photography at the time and in subsequent revivals of interest in it, the intellectual backgrounds that were then generating new histories of photography, the standards and rationale for material analysis of photographs and the physical qualities of the photographs in the Walther collection as evidence of the development of photographic materials during the period. Thematic object-based case studies demonstrate new multidimensional approaches to the photograph as a cultural and artistic object in its own right.

Object:Photo. Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection 1909-1949

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

This survey explores 60 remarkable photographs from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, all acquired with the support of Robert B. Menschel and meticulously selected for the book by the museum’s chief curator of photography, Quentin Bajac. Ranging from the contemporary artist Andreas Gursky to William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the medium’s founding figures, these works collectively tell the story of photography from its beginnings, but upend and newly illuminate that story through their arrangement in reverse chronological order. Each image is the subject of a brief, elegant text. The book borrows its title from a work by Carrie Mae Weems, one of the many great photographs that Menschel has contributed to the collection.

The Shape of Things: Photographs from Robert B. Menschel

Lartigue

Martine

Sayag, Alain (eds.) d'Astier

Individual Artists

National Touring Exhibitions (Hayward Gallery)

Didier Massard photographs - virtuoso exercises in illusion and artifice - invite the viewer into a world of enigmatic dreams and sham paradises, of fairytales and follies, where hyper-realism combines with sleight of hand to challenge and undermine out perceptions.

Artifices - Didier Massard

Le Guillou, Philippe

Gourcuff Gradenigo

Un ouvrage qui explore les modifications de notre regard sur des photographies ethnographiques, portraits et paysages datant du XIXe siècle aux années 1930, véritables ?uvres d?art aujourd?hui ; un éclairage précieux sur les représentations de l?Autre et l?approche des mondes non occidentaux par les Européens, l'Afrique, l'Asie et l'Océanie.

D'un regard l'autre

Le Fur, Yves

Barthe, Christine

Actes-sud

Les yeux du Louvre

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Books by Bajac, Quentin