Puyo, Émile Constant (1857-1933), French pictorialist photographer. Born in Morlaix, Brittany, Puyo joined the army as a young man and began taking amateur photographs c. 1889. He joined the Photo-Club de Paris in 1894, contributed to its annual exhibitions, and became linked to the prominent pictorialist Robert Demachy. His Notes sur la photographie artistique (1896) began a long series of writings on techniques and equipment. In 1902 he left the army to concentrate on photography. Involvement with the Photo-Secessionist movement led to his pictures appearing in Stieglitz's Camera Work, and to participation in a group exhibition (1906). An extensive manipulator of the photographic image, he developed soft-focus lenses to give an impressionistic effect, and his figures and landscapes were often characterized by diffused light—illuminating gauzy fabrics, falling from one side, or reflected from water. He experimented (often with Demachy) with various pigment processes, including gum bichromate, a method of low-relief printing that readily lent itself to tinting. Whilst the Photo-Club disbanded and Puyo rejoined the army in 1914, he did not abandon photography. He ran workshops, wrote copiously, and was paired with Demachy in a retrospective exhibition in Paris in 1931.
— Robert Pols
Bibliography
- La Bretagne de Constant Puyo, photographe (1857-1933), maître de l'école pictorialiste (1992)
