“Photography is an art. There is the only place appropriate for her."
J.-B. G. Le Gre

Among the founders of photography there are many classical artists. They came to it, abandoning traditional painting in order to complement their creativity with technical innovations. It would seem that high flights of fantasy and scientific achievements have different sources of inspiration, but in practice it was this symbiosis that gave the world the most significant, interesting and large-scale photographic masters. A striking example is the life and work of the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gret.

He was born at the very beginning of the 19th century and lived almost entirely (the year of death was 1884). The artist declared his approach to photography as a high art, no less important and no less important than painting. Le Grae developed several technological techniques that are still used in one form or another (and were certainly useful to his contemporaries). The combination of engineering and creative approaches since the time of Leonardo da Vinci has given amazing results and generated extraordinary personalities. The talented Frenchman can rightfully be considered a person who is part of a small and select society of geniuses of the past.

Gustave Le Gray (Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray, sometimes domestic authors call him Le Gray) had many followers. Among his students is the famous photographer and traveler Louis de Klerk. Nadar studied at his school for young fans of photography, where you could see Henri Le Sec, Emile Pekarer and Charles Naigre. The studio, founded in 1852, became the first photography community on the planet, and the talent of its creator is one of the main reasons for this. Le Grae argued that artistic self-expression in filmmaking and the process is its most important component. The photographer took the position that photography is an art that has no place in mass production or commerce. And I always adhered to this belief. Photography did not ultimately lead the artist to wealth, but it did help him see and reveal the potential of an entire field, including from the technical side.

Gustave Le Gret - innovator of photography
The author worked a lot with landscapes - in the middle of the 19th century, they, along with portraiture, were the main topic that fascinated him. That is why he, with the acuity of perception of color and light characteristic of artists, was able to feel the difference in the rendering of individual elements of the landscape. This is especially noticeable when working with sea panoramas, which fascinated Le Gre (he called his works “marines”, from the French word marine - sea).

Marinas during the heyday of the master’s work were extremely popular and were perceived as a visual and technical breakthrough. The excitement that accompanied the author’s work was associated with an unusual shooting technique - almost all the images were printed not from one, but from two negatives.

In one, the photographer tried to better capture the sea, and in the other, the sky, with all the nuances and shimmers of light. At the end of the process, Le Grae combined them, obtaining an unusually (for that time) wide range of illumination in one photo.

This caused a real sensation. One of the first such works, “Brig on the Water” of 1856, is now kept in the archives of the Royal Photographic Society with precisely this wording - “sensation”! The photographer presented it at an exhibition in London, surprising both viewers and colleagues. However, they could hardly have guessed that a century and a half later the technology would become not an interesting “toy”, but a common technique.

Le Grae was the first to realize that the human eye can perceive a much wider range of light than a camera, and the gap needed to be bridged somehow. If the camera cannot cover the entire spectrum at once, then it is necessary to break it into fragments and then combine it in one image. Today, a similar principle is known as HDR and is widely used in digital technology. The surprising thing is that it was not even the 1980s, but the 1840s.

Le Grae said back in 1850 that in the future all photographs would be printed on paper - in the heyday of plates this was, if not eccentricity, then certainly rebellious. But the photographer himself widely used fragile material for his work: he impregnated the sheets with a wax composition, which gave the images clarity. Wax paper, which was used for negatives, significantly reduced the time spent on exposure, and the resolution increased.

Le Grae also experimented with collodion processes, replacing with them the usual daguerreo and calotype (the process was first carried out in 1851). The photographer was not only an innovator, but also an excellent teacher. He wrote textbooks, from which many authors who became famous masters subsequently studied, and some of them practiced directly with Monsieur Gustave - in his atelier.

Ups and downs: a short biography of Gustave Le Gret
Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gret himself did not study with photographers. He came to art from painting - he tried to paint in the famous workshop headed by Paul Delaroche. The boy made progress, but put his brushes aside for new horizons of creativity. Le Grae was born in the town of Villiers-les-Belles (now the outskirts of Paris), in 1820, the son of a haberdasher. Having become acquainted with the rare and unusual art of photography for that time, the young man began to quickly make progress - already in the mid-40s he took a place among the prominent representatives of the new profession. Since 1847, he completely switched to a promising type of activity: he made daguerreotype portraits, and traveled to the forest of Fontainebleau to photograph landscapes.

Le Grae worked extensively in the architectural and landscape genres, photographing castles near Paris. This bore fruit: the French government paid attention to him. In 1851, the Héliographique mission was created, the purpose of which was to preserve in the memory of descendants examples of ancient national architecture, as well as the progress of their restoration work. Five famous French photographers were involved in the case, and Le Graet was among them.

He filmed in the southwestern region of the country, in the Loire Valley, where picturesque palaces are located, then “switched” to Carcassonne, an interesting city full of medieval spirit (Auguste Mestral kept him company).

Returning home, Le Grae created his own, which later became famous, atelier-studio so that all young followers could study. Since 1852, the Société Héliographique has nurtured new talents, provided printing services, popularized and promoted the art of photography, and at the same time its owner. The photographer borrowed money from the Marquis de Briges, 100 thousand francs, to create his own portrait studio. It became the one in which, a little later, his student (and next owner) Nadar held the first exhibition of impressionist artists, which turned modern ideas about painting upside down.

Gustave Le Gray et Cie boasted many clients willing to pay a lot, and its founder became the official photojournalist of Emperor Napoleon III. But this did not bring Le Grae wealth - the construction of the studio made him a constant debtor, and the photographer’s talent did not extend to the commercial field. He paid little attention to business, preferring to create large-scale, innovative works rather than profitable and profitable private portraits.

In the late 1850s, the author amazed the public with magnificent seascapes, views of the Fontainebleau forest, and images of architectural landmarks. But, despite the fact that he gained more than 50 thousand francs, the business was in jeopardy. Creditors did not receive reports, much less their money, and in 1860 the studio was dissolved, and its owner himself was forced to simply hide from the demands, leaving his family in Paris. He (very timely) received an invitation from the writer A. Dumas to live in Sicily, and, having met him in Marseille, he left for the island, where he created a remarkable portrait of an interesting person.

The photographer photographed Giuseppe Garibaldi - the legendary Italian revolutionary patriot posed for him. Le Grae photographed the barricaded streets of Sicilian Palermo, the city in Malta, where he moved after falling out with Dumas, and the landscapes of Lebanon, where he lived for a short time.

At the age of 40, Le Grae finally decided to change his life and not return to France, but move to the East. In the mid-1860s, he moved to Cairo, Egypt, and became a professor of drawing, private tutor to the son of the local ruler. Le Grae lived in the city until his death, which was still more than 20 years. He continued to work as a photographer, but only about 50 photographs from that period have reached us. This is sad - talent could have given the world many more wonderful inventions and images.

Today, Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Graet is recognized everywhere both as the “technical” founder of photography and as an artist. Le Gre's works are sold very expensive - for example, “The Great Wave” was bought for almost 900 thousand dollars in the late 90s.

The artist’s photographs are stored in Paris, London, and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and numerous followers continue to develop what Le Grae once began.

“In my opinion, photography has no place in areas such as industry or trade: photography is an art. This is the only place appropriate for her, and I have always tried to move along this path.” This statement was made in the early 1850s by Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884), one of the most famous and talented French photographers of the 19th century, the most ardent defender of the artistic direction of photography.
Alpine village

Like many other photographers in the 19th and 20th centuries, Gustave le Grêt came to photography from painting. Already his first experiments at the end of the 1840s brought the young artist a prominent place in the circle of French photographers; Without thinking twice, he put his brushes aside and forever connected his life with photography. He worked in several genres at once: he made photographic portraits in his photo studio - by the way, one of the most famous in Paris, and was engaged in architectural and landscape photography. enormous popularity.
Old Oak at Fontainebleau, 1855

Forest of Fontainebleau, 1851

Castle of Fontainebleau (France), reflecting in the water, 1855<

Road to Mont Gerard, 1852

Road to Chailly, circa 1856

Both critics and the general public enjoyed his seascapes, or, as he called them, “Marinas.” Almost all of Le Gre's sea photographs were printed from two negatives: one showed the sea better, the other showed the sky. The fact is that at that time there was no other way to reflect a wide range of lighting in one photograph.
Imperial yacht "Queen Hortense" in the port of Le Havre, France. 1856

Great Waves of the Mediterranean Sea, 1857

Mediterranean Sea, 1857

Brig in moonlight, 1856

Two ships go to sea, 1856

Steamboat, 1856

The ship leaves the port, 1856

Solar Effect, 1856

Sun at its zenith, 1856

Packet boat, 1856

Ships leaving the port of Le Havre, 1856

Mediterranean Sea from Mount Agde, 1856

Breakwater, 1857

Entrance to the port of Brest, August 9-12, 1858

English fleet at Cherbourg, 5 August 1858

Beach at Sainte-Address, 1857

Gustave le Grae is known not only for photographs, but also for his innovations: for example, in the late 1840s, he proposed impregnating negative paper with wax: a “waxed negative” made it possible to reduce exposure time and increase resolution. In addition, he was an excellent teacher: many French photographers who later became famous began their careers in Le Gre's atelier or studied from his textbooks.
Gustave le Grès

Child seated in a chair

Two children

Portrait of de Preval

Captain de Brady

Portrait of Napoleon III, 1852

Empress Eugenia. 1856

Empress Eugenia, 1856

In 1859, Gustave le Grêt was at the height of his fame, but the atelier, which he opened with borrowed money and then paid little attention to, brought in virtually no income. In order to somehow pay off his creditors, he made a series of architectural photographs of Paris, which added to his fame, but did little to help him with money.
Pavilion Molien, Paris, 1859

Pantheon, Paris. 1859

Palace of Jacques Coeur, 1851

North façade of the Chateau de Chenonceau, 1851



Main entrance to the Church of Saint-Jacques in Aubterre

Facade of Tours Cathedral

Basilica of Saint Saturninus of Toulouse

Staircase of the Château de Blois (François Er wing, grand staircase in the courtyard), 1851

Apparently for this reason, in 1860, Le Grae accepted the invitation of the famous writer Alexandre Dumas and, leaving his wife, children, and at the same time his unlucky creditors in Paris, went to Sicily.
Portrait of Alexandre Dumas

There he took one of his most famous photographs - a portrait of the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Portrait of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Palermo, 1860

After Sicily, Gustave le Grès went to Lebanon, and later to Egypt, where he lived the last twenty-odd years of his life, working as a photographer and art teacher for the Pasha's son.
Tombs of the Caliphs, Cairo, Egypt, 1861

Luxor, Egypt, 1854

On the roadstead of Port Said, Egypt, 1857

Prickly pears, Cairo, 1865

Pastre's Garden, Alexandria, 1861

Remains of the temple in Baalbek, 1860

Other works of the photographer
Railway station and coal warehouse

Village by the sea

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