Gustave de Beaucorps
French, 1825–1906
Palace Algeria
INV-1542
Gustave de Beaucorps
French, 1825–19061859
Palace Algeria
Gustave de Beaucorps French, 1825–1906 →19th centuryphotographywaxed paper negative
Date
1859
Medium
Waxed paper negative
Dimensions
Image: 28.2 × 38.6 cm (11 1/8 × 15 1/4 in.); Paper: 28.9 × 39.1 cm (11 7/16 × 15 7/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
The Mary and Leigh Block Endowment Fund
A talented amateur with an aristocratic upbringing, Gustave de Beaucorps began photographing his extensive travels in the mid-1850s. His studies of the architecture, landscapes, and people of Algeria—which France had invaded in 1830—tapped into a public fascination with Orientalist depictions of the Middle East and North Africa. De Beaucorps employed paper negatives, then the preferred technology for photographing architecture. Because enlarging was not yet practicable (prints were made by contact with the negative in direct sunlight), photographer-voyagers required cameras as large as the pictures they wished to make. Although this paper negative does not represent the image's final presentation, it reveals the intricate patterning of Moorish architecture in reverse. A member of the French Photographic Society, de Beaucorps exhibited his prints of Algeria in Paris in 1859, 1861, and 1869.
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