Beschreibung:
Collard, a photographer of the Ponts et Chaussées. The first part of this paper constitutes the first biographical enquiry, based on archives, on Auguste-Hippolyte Collard. Known as a gilder on wood in Poitiers where he settled in 1839, Collard has perhaps been initiated to photography in 1842 by Niepce’s nephew. In 1850, he exhibits in Poitiers his first framed daguerreotypes. Then he goes to Paris, where he opens a familial photography studio. His first successes are due to his skillness in reproducing paintings. At the end of the 1850s, he turns to photography of building sites and offers his services to engineers. Not only a witness, he gives to his photographies of bridges, viaducts, etc., a personal mark : he tries to restitute the modern forms of iron works executed under his eyes ; and such a result is achieved partly thanks to light effects. The author analyses certain formal characteristics of these photographies. The whole set of albums containing Collard’s photographies of building sites (from 1857 to 1886) is recorded and localized in an appendix to the article.