For introduction to this part of the directory see the Photographers page.
Andre Adolphe-Eugene Disdéri
Parisian photographer Eugène Disdéri (28 March 1819 to 4 October 1889) had a colourful life; having been a travelling salesman, he was a lingerie manufacturer in 1844, and then a hosier in Paris. After going bankrupt, he left for Brest at the end of 1846 to open a photography establishment with his wife who continued the business alone after he left Brest In 1852 because of political and financial difficulties.
Geneviève Élisabeth Francart, (c. 1817 to 18 December 1878) was was one of the first female professional photographers in the world. She married Disdéri in 1843, partnering with him in their Brest daguerrotype studio from the late 1840s. In 1872, she moved to Paris, opening a studio in the Rue du Bac which she continued to operate until her death in a Paris hospital in 1878.
After working in various jobs, including in a diorama company, Disderi was registered as a Republican and left Brest for the south of France, where he became a photographer in Nîmes . He then worked on collodion and waxed paper techniques.
Back in Paris in January 1854, he opened one of the most important photography studios of the time. He invented a new camera that used the wet collodion technique and could reproduce six shots on the same glass plate. This was the patent for the card portrait that he filed on 27 November 1854, and whose advantages were the reduction in the price of photography for customers and the reproducibility of the portraits, unlike the daguerreotype process, which was more expensive and only allowed for a single copy.
The photographs obtained by this process have a small format quite close to the visiting card. These quickly become fashionable, Disdéri then becoming the photographer of many courts of Europe .
Disdéri was the official photographer of the Exposition Universelle des produits de l’Agriculture, de l’Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris 1855. The Paris Exposition was a world’s fair held on the Champs-Élysées from 15 May to 15 November 1855. The exposition was a major event in France, then newly under the reign of Emperor Napoleon III. It followed London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 and attempted to surpass that fair’s Crystal Palace with its own Palais de l’Industrie. According to its official report, 5,162,330 visitors attended the exposition, of whom about 4.2 million entered the industrial exposition and 900,000 entered the Beaux Arts exposition. Expenses amounted to upward of $5,000,000, while receipts were scarcely one-tenth of that amount. The exposition covered 16 hectares (40 acres) with 34 countries participating. Photography was officially presented for the first time at an exposition. Its inclusion sparked discussions about its artistic potential and its relationship to painting. Photography’s role in capturing reality influenced artists, especially those in the Realist and Impressionist movements, who sought to depict the world with accuracy and immediacy.
Disdéri also presented very large format, life-size, portraits in Amsterdam. In another famous work Les Jambes de l’Opera, Disdéri created a collage composed entirely of legs belonging to female opera and ballet stars. After the crushing of the Commune, a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May, he took numerous photographs of the bodies of those shot .
In 1856, personal and professional bankruptcy led him to prison. However, he reappeared in 1859 with a new four-lens camera that allowed him to take eight shots on the same plate. In that same year, legend has it that Napoleon III, on his way out of Paris on a military campaign to Italy , stopped at Disdéri’s shop to have his portrait taken. The news spread throughout Paris and the craze was such that many studios opened and began to practice this technique. The route of the imperial procession that day contradicts the legend and there is no sign of a portrait that would fit such an occasion. But there are photographs of the Emperor by Disdéri who was recognised as one of his official photographers; he accompanied the Emperor to Algiers in 1860 and his March 1861 Algeria catalogue has hundreds of Algerian photographs including several views of the landing of the Emperor in Algiers.
In 1862, he published The Art of Photography, in which he sought to prove that photography is an art. Disdéri won a gold medal in London where he had a branch, as well as in Madrid. His luxurious Parisian workshop was then located just above the Robert-Houdin Theatre, at 8 boulevard des Italiens. Inaugurated with great pomp, it included a real museum: “The Louvre of the portrait-card” according to Le Monde Illustré of 14 April 1860 “with a collection of characters and ordinary people whose originals would be enough to populate a second-class sub-prefecture”.
At his peak, Disdéri had up to a hundred employees. Having become rich, he had a house built in Rueil-Malmaison , avenue Paul-Doumer , which still exists.
From 1873, his business declined and was no longer sufficient to pay for his lavish expenses. The apartments and then the studio at boulevard des Italiens were taken over by the photographer Émile Tourtin. In 1877, Disdéri settled in Seville but left for Nice in 1879 before returning to Paris to die there, completely ruined, on 4 October 1889 at the Sainte-Anne hospital, an establishment reserved for the poor, alcoholics and the mentally ill.
He was buried on 6 October 1889 in a trench of the Parisian cemetery of Bagneux reserved for free burials.
He left 91 albums, with 12,000 plates and 50,000 images which were sold at auction on 28 January 1995 with French museums acquiring a little over half of the lots. The other lots were purchased by a few collectors and foreign museums.
Sources: wikipedia Exposition Universelle 1855 Eugene Disderi; Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography
William Duffus, Huddersfield, England
- Wm. Duffus 28 RAMSDEN STREET, HUDDERSFIELD
William Duffus (born about 1858) photographer and artist active in Huddersfield in the 1880s. Duffus was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, the older brother of photographer John Duffus. He worked for Samuel Priestley, a photographer active in the Huddersfield area between the 1860s and 1880s before announcing in the Huddersfield Chronicle in May 1884:
“MR. DUFFUS … begs to inform the Gentry and Others that he is prepared to undertake PHOTOGRAPHY IN ALL ITS BRANCHES, the Studio being newly fitted out with appropriate Scenic Effects for Spring and Summer Costumes, &c. Sitters may be fully assured that for Artistic Lighting and Posing he will give the highest satisfactions.
“NOTE. Parties can be PHOTOGRAPHED at their own Residences in Family Groups or otherwise on the shortest notice.”
An advertisement in the Huddersfield Chronicle on 15 August 1885 coupled an address TO THE NOBILITY, GENTRY, AND OTHERS with a latin tag Artis Amica. Nostrae (Art is our friend). His advertisement offers some insight into the prices of the day:
“CARTES-DE-VISITES. ¾ length, 8 shillings per dozen. Vignettes, 10 shillings per dozen.
“CABINETS. ¾ length, 16 shillings per dozen. Vignettes, 18 shillings per dozen.”
A vignette is a small illustration or portrait photograph which fades into its background without a definite border.
For the rest of the year Duffus offered a free cabinet card to every sitter who took a dozen cdv’s, one highly finished cabinet:-
Special attention is given to CHILDREN, who are photo-graphed instantaneously, on bright mornings only. Bazaar and Presentation Committees liberally treated with. Out-door Views and Landscape Landscapes, and Wedding and Lawn Tennis Parties Photographed at gentlemen’s own residences. High-class OIL PAINTINGS and WATER-COLOURS, up to life-size. PORTRAITS and WORKS of ART COPIED and ENLARGED. Photographs may be had of Her Majesty the Queen (taken from the painting presented to the town by Sir J. W. Sikes), Marquis of Ripon, Sir J. W. Ramsden, Scenes from “Robin Hood” Operetta, &c.
A fire at his studio in 1885 led to him posting a notice of “sincere thanks” to the Huddersfield Fire Brigade in the Huddersfield Chronicle of 14 November 1885. It seems likely this was when he moved his studio to 26 Queen Street. At some point, William’s brother John joined him. In the 1886 election, it was reported that Duffus had been hired to project the outcome of the votes onto a screen, “with the aid of the limelight”, so that “people in front of the Borough Offices could see them.” In August 1886, the bandmaster of the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the West Riding Regiment retired and was presented with two oil paintings by Mr. W. Duffus of Queen Street.
In November 1888, notices were posted that the “business at present carried on by Mr. William Duffus” was to be sold for immediate possession after which William and John travelled to South Africa and formed Duffus Brothers of Cape Town and Johannesburg.
In 1905 their letterhead bore the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom; by 1909 they were claiming the patronage of the Prince and Princess of Wales and the High Commissioner of South Africa. However, there were many financial troubles culminating in bankruptcy in 1912. Business had fallen off dramatically, a consequence of economic recession and the partnership was not able to service its creditors.
A subsequent company formed by Willliam Duffus with Percy Missen Clark as managing director led to litigation between them including an allegation that Duffus was pocketing fees. The company was represented by a lawyer against whom Duffus had previously lost a defamation action and was eventually wound up in 1922.
Sources: Huddersfield Exposed; DUFFUS BROS. of Cape Town & Johannesburg
undivided-back postcards 