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CAMILLE SILVY (French, 1834-1910) ARMÉE D'ITALIE, ORDRE DU JOUR albumen print mounted on stiff p...

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CAMILLE SILVY (French, 1834-1910) ARMÉE D'ITALIE, ORDRE DU JOUR albumen print mounted on stiff p...
CAMILLE SILVY (French, 1834-1910) ARMÉE D'ITALIE, ORDRE DU JOUR albumen print mounted on stiff paper 9 7/8 x 7 7/16 in. (25.1 x 18.9 cm) mount: 193/4 x 153/4 in. (50.2 x 40 cm) 1859 PROVENANCE Private Collection, PARIS LITERATURE L'ILLUSTRATION, JOURNAL UNIVERSEL, May 21, 1859 (illustrated as a wood engraving) THE PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNAL, LONDON, January 15-16, 1860, offered to subscribers by M.F. Joubert (illustrated in phototype process; image inverted left to right) Brian Coe and Mark Haworth-Booth, A GUIDE TO EARLY PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES, London, 1983, p. 85, pl. 27 (illustrated in phototype process) Mark Haworth-Booth, CAMILLE SILVY: RIVER SCENE, FRANCE, J. Paul Getty Museum, MALIBU, 1992, fig. 33 (illustrated as the 1859 wood engraving) HAPPY BIRTHDAY PHOTOGRAPHY, BOKELBERG SAMMLUNG, Zurich, 1989, no. 56 (illustrated) This remarkable photograph was extremely advanced for the time it was made in the mid-19th century, and resonates in concept and execution with much contemporary work of the beginning of the 21st century. Mark Haworth-Booth succinctly describes the story behind this photograph. "Napoleon III had sailed for Italy to join the army he had sent to drive the Austrians out. He reached Genoa on May 12, 1859. Soon afterward, he drafted an Ordre du Jour addressed to the army and...arranged for the text to be telegraphed to Paris, printed overnight, and posted in the streets. This gesture, bringing the home population into direct contact with military events on the eve of war, appears to have had the effect the emperor desired. The weekly magazine L'ILLUSTRATION carried a story about it on May 21 [including a wood engraving of Silvy's photograph, see illus.], commenting on how the emperor's soldierly orders to his troops had impressed the citizens in the faubourgs, who read his words even before they had been inserted in LE MONITEUR, the official government mouthpiece. There was a strong political implication behind the appearance in the capital-unexpectedly, instantaneously, and at dawn-of the emperor's order. It was a moment that combined high technology, new politics, and history in the making" (Haworth-Booth, pp. 68-69). Silvy witnessed this scene in the streets of Paris. Recognizing the importance of the event-virtually instantaneous messaging to the masses of an impending war-he must have rapidly posed or reenacted the scene for his camera. In less than ten days, his "news" photograph was published in the press. Still convinced of the importance of this photograph, the following year Silvy offered phototypes (a kind of photo-mechanical reproduction in permanent pigment in which the image is inverted) of it for sale by subscription. The concern with the mass media and how it functions has been explored by numerous contemporary artists. The figures in the photograph look to be denizens of the Parisian faubourgs involved in an actual event, but there is a staginess about the photograph that recalls much contemporary work, such as Philip-Lorca diCorcia's. Silvy's work is very rare, especially his early work, perhaps in part due to a fire that destroyed his studio in 1862. Camille Silvy was born an aristocrat and began a career as a diplomat. He started photographing in 1857 and opened a studio in Paris the following year, when he became a member of the Société Française de Photographie. In 1859, he abandoned his diplomatic post and moved to London where he set himself up in a studio as a high society portrait photographer. He also photographed architecture, genre scenes, and landscapes that attracted considerable praise. In the 1860s, he promoted the idea of making photographic duplications of rare manuscripts. He also experimented with a variety of photographic innovations, including designing a panoramic camera. His studio employed forty people in 1868, when he sold it to take up a minor diplomatic post in Exeter, England. Silvy returned to France to serve as a Lieutenant in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The hazardous chemistry he employed in making collodion negatives affected his mental health and he spent the last thirty years of his life in an asylum.
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