Auguste Salzmann

(b Ribeauville, Alsace, 14 April 1824; d Paris, 24 Feb 1872). French photographer, archaeologist and painter. A painter of landscapes and religious scenes and a keen archaeologist, he was fascinated by the Middle East from an early age. He visited Italy and Algeria with his friend Eug?ne Fromentin, and he was in Egypt at the time of the excavations of Auguste Mariette (1821-81). Taking advantage of a mission supported by the Minist?re de l'Instruction Publique, he decided to set off for the Holy Land at the end of 1853. In his desire to support the disputed theses of the archaeologist Louis F?licien Caignart de Saulcy (1807-80) concerning the age and appearance of the monuments there, in 1854 he brought back from his trip c. 200 calotypes. The album J?rusalem (pubd 1855-6; Paris, Mus. d'Orsay; Paris, Bib. N.; priv. col.) contained 174 of them. In 1863, he set off again with de Saulcy to carry out more intensive research, and his photographs were used to illustrate the archaeologist's articles.

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Salzmann, Auguste (1824-72), Alsatian painter, archaeologist, and photographer, who was the first to use photography systematically as an adjunct to archaeological work, and to provide evidence for his patron de Saulcy's earlier findings in the Holy Land. His paper-negative photographs consist primarily of architectural details and fragments from excavations, which he claimed were ‘conclusive brute facts’ in the continuing debate about the age of architectural remains in and around Jerusalem. After returning to France, he published Jerusalem: études et réproductions photographiques de la Ville Sainte depuis l'époque judaïque jusqu'à nos jours (2 vols., 1856), containing 150 photographs. The tightly cropped architectural detail he recorded was unusual in an age which prized the inclusive, middle-distance architectural view, and led in the 1980s to his classification as precociously modern. It is more accurate to see contemporary aesthetics, schooled in modernist strategies that emphasize surface over depth, as receptive to the formal elements of his work, although few modern viewers are able to read the archaeological argument embedded in his photographs.

— Kathleen Howe

Bibliography

• Heilbrunn, F., “‘Photographies de la Terre Sainte par Auguste Salzmann’”, in Félix de Saulcy (1807-1880) et la Terre Sainte (1982)