The Auer Ory Foundation for Photography presents Edouard Denis Baldus: Paris in the 1850s, an exhibition of original prints from the M+M Auer Ory collection.
Edouard Denis Baldus was born in 1813 in Grünebach in Westphalia, Prussia. In 1838, he arrived in France to improve his painting practice. The following year, he was in New York where he painted portraits. In 1841, the paintings he presented at the Salon were refused, then in the following years were accepted such as his ‘Virgin and Child’, ‘Child’s Head’… as well as religious paintings and genre series. In 1849, he became interested in photography and decided to settle permanently in France. Painter and photographer, he received assignments from the French Government to make copies of paintings kept at the Louvre. For his first mission in 1851, he was sent by the Committee of Historic Monuments: leaving from Fontainebleau, he traveled through Burgundy, the Lyonnais, and the Dauphiné to end up in Provence after crossing the many departments (he used the Talbot process), this mission was followed by many others. In 1852, he photographed the monuments of Paris following their presentation by Seguier at the Academy of Sciences, commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior. Publication of his gelatin process. In 1853 he began an album where he brought together and classified all the monuments which served as types of the various styles of architecture. From 1854 to 1857, he worked alongside the architect of the Nouveau Louvre, Hector Lefuel. In 1856, he received a commission from the Ministry of the Interior to photograph the flooding of the Rhône. In 1859, he photographed the railway from Paris to Lyon and the Mediterranean, for James de Rothschild. In 1864, he photographed the construction of the Al-Kantara bridge in Constantine, Algeria and other works. From 1865, it seems that he only exploited his existing collection by publishing it in the form of albums of heliographic engravings and photographs. He died forgotten on December 22, 1889 in his house in Arcueil-Cachan, near Paris.
Edouard Denis Baldus : Paris in the 1850s
Auer Ory Foundation for Photography
Rue du Couchant 10
1248 Hermance, Switzerland
www.auerphoto.com/en
