The Art Institute of Chicago

Mont-Majour, Porterne de la Tour de l'AbbayeAuthor(s): David TravisSource: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2, Notable Quotations at TheArt Institute of Chicago (2003), pp. 34-35Published by: The Art Institute of ChicagoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121045 .

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Mont-Majour, Porterne de la Tour de l'Abbaye

c. 1852

Charles Nigre (French; 1820-1880)

Calotype negative; 29.5 x 22.4 cm (II 5/8 x 8 '3/16 in.)

MARY AND LEIGH BLOCK ENDOWMENT, 2002.64

A negative image of a famous and beautiful woman will render her identity and allure completely

unrecognizable, but if the subject is a building, the genius of the structure may survive with clarity. This is because

buildings are not conceived primarily in terms of light, but rather in terms of space, function, and the natural forces and materials that shape them. Thus, little is lost of the architecture of the portal in the defensive tower at the

Abbey of Montmajour in the calotype negative Charles

Nigre made of it around I852.

FIGURE I Henri Le Secq (French; 1818-1882). Untitled

(Chartres, Pavillon de l'Horloge), 1851/52. Waxed paper negative; 34-5 x 24.7 cm (13 /8 x 93/4 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago, Mary and Leigh Block Collection (1997.218).

Though photography is deemed an accurate medi-

um, this paper negative tells us only so much about the stonework and nothing of the importance of what was then a ruin four miles outside the city of Arles in south- ern France. We must rely on cultural and religious histo- rians to tell us of the founding in the tenth century of what soon became a Benedictine abbey and the erection in 1369 of the defensive tower with its massive walls.

When Charles Negre came to Montmajour as a pho- tographer, he had some of these concerns in mind. He was

compiling a visual inventory of the great monuments of his native region of Provence, many of which were in des-

perate need of restoration. Other photographers of his

generation were engaged by the French government in

making similar documents. Henri Le Secq, like Negre, had witnessed the announcement and first development of photography when in his twenties and deciding on what career he might pursue. Le Secq became famous for his prints and negatives of Chartres Cathedral (see fig. i). Most of the great French architectural mouments were

religious structures and only a few were chateaus of the

nobility. Thus, abbeys and cathedrals dominated the sub-

ject matter of this first generation of documentary pho- tographers in France.

In the 1885os photographs were seen and distributed

mostly in specially prepared albums or privately pub- lished portfolios. Negre included a salted-paper print from this negative, as well as one of the Sainte-Croix-en-

Jerusalem Chapel on the abbey grounds, in his 1854 port- folio, Le Midi de la France. Knowing that even fortresses fall into ruin, he also knew that photographs fade.

Happily by 1857 Negre had solved the problem of the

impermanence of the positive photographic print (nega- tives survived much better) by perfecting on his own a

photogravure process that transferred the chemical image of his negatives into one of permanent carbon ink. Thus,

many of the famous and beautiful monuments and land-

scapes that constituted an important identity of his native

region are preserved by both his fine photographic eye and his technical ingenuity.

DAVID TRAVIS

34

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