Background
Gustave Le Gray was born in 1820 in Villiers-le-Belle, France.
Gustave Le Gray was born in 1820 in Villiers-le-Belle, France.
Gustave studied painting with Delaroche in Paris and his photographic work was influenced by Alphonse Louis Poitevin.
Le Gray operated a portrait studio at the Barrière de Clichy in Paris, France from 1848 to 1859. His whereabouts were unaccounted for from 1859 to 1864, when he is known to have left Paris. In 1865 Gustave had resettled in Cairo, where he painted and taught drawing.
In 1850 Le Gray was the first to introduce the possibilities of the use of collodion in photography; with collodion, he eventually succeeded in producing pictures with relatively short exposure time.
A landscape and seascape photographer who also did some portraiture, Le Gray was most noted for having initiated combination printing. The cloud effects he achieved with his waxed- paper negative and collodion wet-plate negatives and his salt-and-albumen prints caused a sensation in his day. He also recorded architecture and scenes of military life.
Publications Books: Photography: The First Eighty Years, Valerie Lloyd, 1976 (P. & D. Colnaghi: London); Une Invention de XIXe siecle, Bernard Marbot, 1976 (Bibliotheque Nationale: Paris);
Creative Photography: Aesthetic Trends, 1838-1960, Helmut Gernsheim, 1962 (Faber & Faber: London); History of Photography, Josef Maria Eder, 1945; Traite nouveau theorique pratique, 1853, 2nd ed.,1854;
Photographie:Traite pratique de photographie sur papier et sur verre, 1850, rev. 1852, 1854 (Balliere: Paris). Anthologies: The Photograph Collector's Guide, Lee D. Witkin &. Barbara London, 1979; The Invented Eye, Edw. Lucie-Smith, 1975; The Magic Image, Cecil Beaton & Gail Buckland, 1975; Early Photographs Early Photographers, Oliver Mathews, 1973 (Reedminster: London); French Primitive Photography, Andre Jammes & Robt. Sobieszek, intro. by Minor White, 1969.
Gustaves photographic work was influenced by Alphonse Louis Poitevin.