DAGUERREOTYPES BY A FRENCH TRAVELER WHO WAS AMONG THE FIRST TO PHOTOGRAPH THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN

Monumental Journey displays Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey’s daguerreotypes which include the earliest surviving photographs of many notable cities and monuments in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Michael Press

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, “Western Approach to the Acropolis, Athens” (1842) courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

It seems there is always interest in early photography, especially early photographs of historic sites around the Mediterranean. Consider some recent examples: In 2016–2017, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted Faith and Photography featuring the French artist and scholar Auguste Salzmann’s photographs of 1850’s Palestine. Right now, Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation in From Today, Painting Is Dead is showcasing European photography from the 1840s through to 1880. The Met’s current entry in the field is titled Monumental Journey: The Daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey. The exhibition includes a selection of about 120 of the more than 1,000 photographs taken by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey around the eastern Mediterranean between 1842 and 1845.

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, “Self-portrait” (1841-42) courtesy Bibliothèque nationale de France

Girault’s daguerreotypes have gone on a journey of their own: forgotten after his death in 1892, rediscovered in the attic of his old house decades later, some donated to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, many others sold at auction to various institutions and private collectors since the year 2000. In fact, these auctions of Girault’s work have helped spur public interest in early photographs — especially in the daguerreotype, the first practical photographic process to be publicly announced, in 1839. (The technology was named after its inventor, Louis Daguerre.) They have been the subject of many exhibitions over the last two decades. The Met first exhibited some of Girault’s daguerreotypes, loaned from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, in 2003. Monumental Journey is a collaborative exhibition featuring Girault’s photographs owned by several institutions, including the Met itself, which has purchased more than 20 of Girault’s images since 2016. Those purchases have been funded by gifts from various donors, most notably the Sackler family. As museums start to reckon with the ethics of accepting funds from wealthy donors tied to the opioid crisis, the exhibition serves as a reminder of how extensive the Sacklers’ influence is, on the Met and in the art world generally. (At the same time, this situation is ultimately just a part of the larger problem of museums needing to rely on wealthy donors for funding.)

Monumental Journey is organized largely according to the route Girault himself took on his travels, through what are now Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and the West Bank, before returning to France. Girault’s daguerreotypes include the earliest surviving photographs of many notable cities and monuments in the Eastern Mediterranean: the Athenian Acropolis, Jerusalem, the impressive Roman temples of Baalbek, and more. Special display cases highlight his rare photographs of people, or the boxes he used to store his daguerreotypes back home. Texts on the walls as well as maps — including Girault’s own map from the expedition — help to orient visitors.

For anyone (like me) who hasn’t seen daguerreotypes in person before, this exhibition will be a revelation. What struck me first is how small they are. Daguerreotypes are not prints from negatives — they are plates with positive (but reversed) images produced directly in the camera. This means their size is restricted by the camera and plates in use. Even using oversize cameras, Girault’s images appear small. But this is also because he used many plates for multiple, separate exposures and afterwards cut them up. Even as miniatures, though, the daguerreotypes are remarkably detailed. At their best they are beautiful, even haunting images. This effect is intensified by the fact that many of them are not purely black and white, but have strong yellow and blue hues. Like many other practitioners, Girault gilded many of his plates after developing them, both to stabilize the image and to make them more striking. Many of Girault’s plates were also overexposed, in what appear to be attempts to capture details in bright, outdoor lighting, with the blue Mediterranean skies bleeding into the images.

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, “Pompey’s Pillar, Alexandria” (1842) (with detail of graffiti in reverse), Metropolitan Museum of Art

In his photographic work, Girault combined two very separate strands: artistic and scientific. Like Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype, Girault was a painter. Daguerre conceived of his photographs as individual, one-of-a-kind works of art; Girault followed through on this. His special process of multiple exposures turned the square plates into a set of remarkable panoramas and vertical views. Even when photographing monuments that were popular subjects of early daguerreotypes, Girault finds unique views — like the tops of circular buildings, such as the Temple of Hercules Victor in Rome or the Tower of the Winds in Athens………….

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