Background
Hippolyte Bayard was born on January 20,1801 in Breteuil-sur-Noye, France.
Hippolyte Bayard was born on January 20,1801 in Breteuil-sur-Noye, France.
While working as a civil servant, Bayard experimented with photography. Hippolyte Bayard developed his own method of producing photos called the direct positive process. The resulting image was a unique photograph that could not be reproduced. Due to the paper's poor light sensitivity, an exposure of approximately twelve minutes was required. Using this method of photography, still subject matter, such as buildings, were favoured. When used for photographing people, sitters were told to close their eyes so as to eliminate the eerie, "dead" quality produced due to blinking and moving one's eyes during such a long exposure.
In the summer of 1851, along with photographers Édouard Baldus, Henri Le Secq, Gustave Le Gray, and O. Mestral, Bayard travelled throughout France to photograph architectural monuments at the request of the Commission des Monuments Historiques.
Hippolyte Bayard was persuaded to postpone announcing his process to the French Academy of Sciences by François Arago, a friend of Louis Daguerre, who invented the rival daguerreotype process. Arago's conflict of interest cost Bayard the recognition as one of the principal inventors of photography. He eventually gave details of the process to the French Academy of Sciences on 24 February 1840 in return for money to buy better equipment.
Despite his initial hardships in photography, Bayard continued to be a productive member of the photographic society. He was a founding member of the French Society of Photography.
Hippolyte Bayard was also one of the first photographers to be commissioned to document and preserve architecture and historical sites in France for the Missions Héliographiques in 1851 by the Historic Monument Commission. He used a paper photographic process similar to the one he developed to take pictures for the Commission. Additionally, he suggested combining two negatives to properly expose the sky and then the landscape or building, an idea known as combination printing which began being used in the 1850s.
(Photo, Paris architecture, mid 19th Century.)
Chair in a Garden
1847Tests of photosensitivity
1839Still life with plaster casts
1839Self portrait
1839Arrangement of specimens, direct positive print
1842Montmartre
1842Woman with fan
1842Madeleine Paris
1845Arch and picture of horse
1847Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris
1850France
1858Pierre Michel François Chevalier
1861Duchess d'Harcourt
Ernest Pinard
Self portrait
1863