Hippolyte Bayard

Hippolyte Bayard ( born January 20, 1801 in Breteuil -sur- Noye, France, † May 14 1887 in Nemours ) was a French finance officer and legal counsel, who became known as the inventor of the direct-positive process, and as one of the " founding fathers " of photography. He organized the first exhibition of photographs in the world and is still considered unrecognized pioneer of photography. With the staged photograph of his alleged suicide, he became the first " photo Counterfeiters" in the history of photography.

Life and work

Hippolyte Bayard was the son of the magistrate Emmanuel Bayard and Adélaïde Elisabette Vacousin from Breteuil -sur- Noye in the département of Oise. The young Hippolyte was gifted versatile: he painted, drew, was considered inventive and had soon acquired basic knowledge in physics and chemistry in addition to artistic techniques. Early on, he moved to the art metropolis Paris, where he - in the tradition of his father - worked as a lawyer and as a civil servant in the Ministry of Finance. Financially secure so he could devote himself entirely to his artistic experiments in private life. He became friends with the painter Henri Grevedon (1776-1860) and other artists and craftsmen.

Little is known about Hippolyte Bayard's private life, he was considered modest and reclusive man who fascinated him since his youth for the phenomenon of light, so experimented and independently by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre for years looking for a photographic method, images on light- sensitive fix -made paper. Biographers suggest that Bayard the Paris optician Charles Louis Chevalier - in which Daguerre also bought his optical lenses - should have in 1830 reported the first attempt. By no later than 1837, he had his first photograms made ​​on sensitized paper, which he collected in a chronological album.

Bayard's direct positive process

Unlike Daguerre, who experimented exclusively with -sensitized metal plates, Bayard found a method in which he overlaid ordinary writing paper with silver chloride ( silver chloride ) and then allowed to blacken it away from sunlight; then he dipped the blackened paper in an iodine - potassium iodide solution ( Lugol's solution), it is positioned in a camera and exposed it again. The paper bleached out, the iodine was excreted from the potassium iodide solution and bound to the blackened silver, so he received a positive image. The developed image was then fixed and rinsed in a solution of potassium bromide or sodium thiosulphate solution ( Fixiernatron ). This Bayard had developed the first direct positive process. A disadvantage of the method is the missing negative, so that a direct copying is not possible. This was one reason why Bayard's method was not applied.

The lost race for recognition

On January 7, 1839 was the physicist François Arago, who had great influence as head of the Paris Observatory, inform the Academy of Sciences in Paris Louis Daguerre on new process, but providing only insufficient results. On May 20, 1839 Bayard had visited for the first time at Arago, in order to achieve the patenting and publication of his invention. But Arago was already busy with the recovery of Daguerre's process and refused, although Bayard process was documented accurately and promising appeared.

On June 24, 1839 Bayard finally turned 30 direct positive paper prints at the Salle des Commissaires - prisseurs in Paris publicly - the first photo exhibition in the world - one months before Daguerre had his method certified at all provisional (30 July 1839). On August 19, 1839 François Arago finally published before the Academy, the patent of the daguerreotype, which was translated within a few months in eight languages. Hippolyte Bayard's desire to make his invention according to public or to effectively market had failed.

Although Hippolyte Bayard was next Niepce, Daguerre and the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot, the fourth " father" in the history of photography, he had the race against the rapidly commercialized method of the Daguerreotype and the Calotype ( calotype ) lost and ran as an independent "With inventor " of photography to the sidelines.

The first photo fakery

His failure as an inventor he visualized 1840 a ​​picture entitled Autoportrait en noyé ( "Self-Portrait as a Drowned " ): With the help of his own photographic process he made a self-portrait ago, on the back of it a letter - almost otherworldly - wrote, in which he larmoyant - ironically his loss to Louis Daguerre complained:

" The man you see overleaf corpse is that of Mr. Bayard ... The Academy, the king and all those who have seen these pictures were filled with admiration, as you yourself admire today, even though he found it deficient. This has brought him much honor, but not a penny. The government, which had given much too much Mr. Daguerre, explained that he could not do anything for Mr. Bayard. Since the unfortunate man has drowned herself. H. B., October 18, 1840. "

This is one of the earliest photographic self- portraits, which due to its production in the history of photography has a particular status. Hippolyte Bayard was then often referred to as the first " photo Counterfeiters".

Société Héliographique, later years

In the following years he turned even the daguerreotype and the calotype to and photographed from 1847 monuments and views of Paris, including the famous windmills of Montmartre. Its numerous self-portraits and group shots are evidence of a skilful handling of the photographic equipment; its precise arranged still lifes of garden tools have an innovative originality, let the then picturesque compositions far behind.

Hippolyte Bayard: Windmills, Montmartre, Paris, 1842

Hippolyte Bayard: La Madeleine, Paris, 1845

1851 Bayard became a founding member of the Société Héliographique. In the same year he and the four photographers Édouard Baldus, Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq and Auguste Mestral were commissioned by the Commission for preservationists to produce photographs of historic buildings to capture as a monument historique. For this so-called mission Héliographique Bayard traveled to Normandy. 1854 was the Société Héliographique into the still existing Société Française de Photographie (SFP ). Bayard was for many years Secretary and General Counsel of the Company, which today manages his estate.

On January 24, 1863 Bayard was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honour. He, however, did not receive the Cross for his achievements in the field of photography, but for his merits in a state office. In old age, Hippolyte Bayard moved back to Nemours, where he died on 14 May 1887 aged 86 years. He was buried in the cemetery of Saint- Pierre- lès- Nemours.

In 1977, photographic works by Hippolyte Bayard were shown at documenta 6 in Kassel in the famous photography department, which was the context of contemporary art in the context of " 150 years of photography."