Founded in January 1851 as a society of artists, literati, and scientists ‘to hasten the perfection of photography’, it existed for less than a year. However, it served as a model for later associations (many of its members became founding members of the Société Française de Photographie in 1854), just as its journal, La Lumière, inspired similar journals. It also pressed strongly for the government-funded Mission Héliographique. Under the presidency of the daguerreotypist Jean-Baptiste Louis, Baron Gros (1793-1871), members included Hippolyte Bayard, Edmond Becquerel (1820-91), Eugène Durieu (1800-74), Niépce de Saint-Victor, Olympe Aguado, Gustave Le Gray, Édouard Baldus, Henri Le Secq, N. M. P. Lerebours (1807-73), the writers Francis Wey, Henri-Victor Regnault (1810-78), and Ernest Lacan, the painter Eugéne Delacroix (1798-1863), the engraver Augustin-François Lemaître (1797-1870), and the optician Charles-Louis Chevalier (1804-59).
— Kelley E. Wilder
Bibliography
- Rouillé, A., La Photographie en France, textes & controverses: une anthologie 1816-1871 (1989)
