LA PHOTOGRAPHIE, SES ORIGINES, SES PROGRÈS, SES TRANSFORMATIONS: [Contained in]: MÉMOIRES DE LA SOCIÉTE IMPÉRIALE DES SCIENCES DE L' AGRICULTURE ET DES ARTS DE LILLE. ANNÉE 1869. III SERIES - 7TH VOLUME.
Paris - Lille: Didron; Chez L. Quarre, 1869 - 1870. First edition. 8vo., [ii], 561 pp. Contemporary quarter morocco gilt and cloth over boards, t.e.g., others untrimmed. The board tips are rubbed through and there is scattered foxing to the text. A near very good copy. Item #52116
LA PHOTOGRAPHIE, SES ORIGINES, SES PROGRES, SES TRANSFORMATIONS, is regarded as Blanquart-Évrard's enduring work, an accurate history of the first three decades of photography, illustrated with contemporary examples. "Seminal discussion of photomechanical printing and photographic illustration ... the text of this treatise was the earliest to explore the importance that these new processes would eventually have in printing and publishing. Blanquart-Evrard clearly understood that the ink-based image would eventually completely replace the silver based print in publishing."--Hanson Collection catalog, p. 36.
This title, which was released in three forms, is contained here in the journal of the society of which Blanquart-Évrard was the president. It begins on p. 161 and concludes on p. 214, and contains 16 specimen plates with tissue guards, of which 5 are folding: Fortier's Château de Blois - salt print (1851); Maxime Du Camp's photograph from Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie, a salt print (1852); a photo-lithograph by the Poitevin process; 2 photo-lithographs by Zurcher; La Grande Soeur, a photograph by Goupil; Galerie des Beaux-Arts, a photogravure by the Garnier process; La Justice, a heliogravure by Baldus; a reproduction of a manuscript leaf; Milon de Crotone, a photogravure by Baldus, printed by Lemercier; Vue du Baptistère Louis XIII, a relief photogravure by the Garnier process; carbon print portrait; Croquis, a photograph by Alphonse Braun from a drawing by Raphaël; Rein dans les Mains..., a woodburytype by Goupil; a carbon print portrait by Marion; and a carbon print portrait by
Braun.
The plates come from Blanquart-Évrard's unused stock and vary from copy to copy. Most copies have 14 plates, and I have seen a reference to a copy with 15 plates; this copy with 16 plates seems to be unique. There are three different editions with this title; one is a quarto edition of 1869 with fourteen plates; another, issued in quarto in 1870 for presentation has as many as 30 plates.
Rare, with WorldCat locating only five copies of this editions: Bibliotheque Nationale de France, BM Lyon, George Eastman House, University of Vermont, and the Rijksmuseum. Roosens and Salu No. 928.
Price: $9,500.00