Bisson Frères

Bisson Frères as a Collaborative Studio

Bisson Frères was a photographic studio jointly operated by the elder brother Louis-Auguste Bisson and the younger Auguste-Rosalie Bisson from 1852 to 1863. The Städel Museum registers the two as a single studio and holds their architectural photographs from across Europe.^*6 The Musée d’Orsay also records their activity as “publishers and printers,” confirming that the studio treated exposure, printing, and publication as linked stages of production.^*3 When the maker of a particular exposure is not known, collecting institutions likewise preserve Bisson Frères as the joint authorship under which the work circulated.

The Shift to Large Glass Negatives

Louis-Auguste practiced the daguerreotype from an early date and photographed large numbers of members of the Constituent Assembly in 1848. BnF Éditions describes how the brothers organized Maison Bisson frères in 1852 and developed a commercial studio spanning portraiture, reproduction, architecture, and large-format photography.^*22 They largely bypassed the paper-negative phase and moved to large glass plates in the early 1850s. The Met explains that by about 1853 they were using large glass negatives and had reached a technical level in architectural photography comparable to Édouard Baldus.^*2 The large plates were difficult to transport and develop, but they could preserve sculpture, masonry joints, and scaffolding at high resolution. The large albumen prints seen in views of Notre-Dame could function as visually compelling architectural images and as detailed material for restoration and research.^*14

Reading Architectural Sculpture Through Large Glass Negatives

At the portal of Saint-Ursin in Bourges, the camera moves close enough to the sculpted surface to record wear on the stone and fine details of the carving.^*2 In the full view of the Sainte-Chapelle, the tall building fills a large print whose smooth albumen surface preserves a continuous field of windows, walls, and roof details.^*4 Large-format photography supplied more than visual impact: it produced enough information for architectural details to be compared in published plates.

Using Figures to Convey Architectural Scale

Figures standing near entrances, stairways, or wall surfaces give the viewer a scale against which the size of architecture can be judged. Records of Parisian monuments from the French Ministry of Culture show how the Bissons’ large prints were preserved as systematic documentation of architectural heritage.^*11 A photograph of the sacristy of Notre-Dame in the Cité de l’architecture, bearing the studio’s stamp, is another example of a large-format photograph later preserved and consulted as material for architectural history.^*13 Human scale was therefore part of the composition and a practical way to communicate dimensions to viewers who had not seen the building in person.

The Collective Labor Behind Photographing Mont Blanc

For the 1861 Mont Blanc photographs, carrying the equipment to high altitude while retaining the precision of large glass plates became part of the conditions of production. According to The Met, Auguste-Rosalie employed guides and twenty-five porters to carry the camera, glass plates, chemicals, and a portable darkroom, reaching the summit on July 25 and exposing three negatives there.^*1 The Ascent of Mont Blanc was made on the descent after figures were repositioned for the photograph; it is not an unstaged image taken in the middle of the climb.^*1 Footprints, spacing between figures, and the expanse of snow describe the movement of the party and the scale of the slope. A Swiss Alpine Club account likewise stresses the collective labor required to move large-format equipment into the high mountains.^*18

Architectural Publishing: Reproductions photographiques…

The brothers’ architectural photographs were issued as a sustained publishing project rather than as isolated works. From 1854 to 1862, Reproductions photographiques des plus beaux types d’architecture et de sculpture… appeared in installments; the BnF catalog records 201 photographs distributed across sixty-eight deliveries.^*7 The value of the project lay in placing buildings from different cities, periods, and styles within the same publishing format. Notre-Dame and other Paris monuments show photography becoming a comparative plate for architectural history.^*12 Regional structures such as the chapel at Château de Chenonceau were incorporated into the same serial publication, allowing architectural styles from different places to be compared at a common scale.^*19 Alongside the architectural series, the studio also reproduced works of art photographically and maintained the equipment needed to sell prints from its negatives over time.

Why Photograph Mont Blanc? 1858–61

The Bissons’ Alpine photography did not begin suddenly with the imperial journey of 1860. The BnF’s Le Mont Blanc vu du Mont Joly, dated around 1860, views the summit from a distance.^*8 Another print of Mont Blanc & glacier des Bossons confirms that the studio marketed glaciers and distant views as well as the summit.^*9 The BnF’s Haute-Savoie. Le Mont-Blanc et ses glaciers gathered photographs made in 1858, 1859, and 1860 into an album commemorating Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie’s visit to the Mer de Glace on September 3, 1860.^*10 After an unsuccessful attempt to photograph from the summit in 1860, the expedition succeeded there in 1861.^*1 The Met explains that these photographs brought high-altitude views to Parisian customers who were unlikely to experience such places themselves.^*1 Mont Blanc thus served the market for an imperial travel souvenir and the broader urban market for Alpine views, while also demonstrating the studio’s large-format technical capabilities.

The City and Leisure

The Bissons’ commercial studio also photographed urban leisure sites and modern monuments. Pré Catelan, café, an albumen print from a dry collodion negative made in 1860, records a garden, chairs, and café architecture.^*5 The Arc de Triomphe brought a modern urban monument into the same large-format comparative field.^*15 Porte Saint-Denis was photographed in a similar manner, making the Parisian cityscape part of an architectural catalog.^*16 MoMA’s record of multiple exhibitions and publications involving Bisson Frères shows that this material has subsequently been reconsidered as photographic form as well as architectural documentation.^*17

Reproducing Rembrandt Prints Through Photography

Bisson Frères reproduced works of art through photography as well as photographing architecture and mountains on location. According to the BnF catalog, L’Oeuvre de Rembrandt reproduit par la photographie, published from 1853 to 1858, was issued in two volumes and contained one hundred photographs reproducing Rembrandt’s prints.^*26 Getty also holds photographic material from the publication.^*23 A BnF print of the Panthéon carries the stamp “Dépôt général de photographies,” identifying a sales outlet.^*24 A photograph of the Pont Neuf is marked “Imprimerie photographique Bisson Frères,” explicitly identifying the firm as a photographic printing establishment.^*25 The ability to market architectural publications, reproductions of prints, urban views, and Alpine photographs over time depended on a studio that combined cameras and darkroom equipment with printing and sales infrastructure.

The Bisson Frères Name and Studio Labor

The name Bisson Frères makes it difficult to reduce authorship to a single individual viewpoint. Large-format photography required the preparation of glass plates, chemicals, darkroom work, transport, printing, mounting, and sales; in the mountains, guides and porters entered the production process as well. INHA’s artist record describes the brothers as an enterprise working across large reproductive photography, architecture, mountains, and portraiture.^*20 The form of the large photographs depended on an organization capable of preparing and transporting plates and sustaining darkroom, printing, and sales operations, not just on the person who released the shutter. The Städel Museum likewise catalogs works under the collective name Bisson Frères; when responsibility for an individual exposure cannot be established, the studio remains the appropriate level of authorship.^*6 The joint name preserves a production process that cannot always be assigned to either brother alone. BnF Éditions’ account of the studio moving continuously among portraiture, print reproduction, architecture, and Alpine work further supports reading these subjects as one production and publishing business rather than as unrelated identities.^*22 The consistent appearance of the large prints was sustained by the studio’s ongoing printing and sales workflow as much as by the two brothers themselves.

Conveying Mountain Scale Through Figures and Shooting Conditions

The scale of Mont Blanc is difficult to communicate if the mountain is photographed without reference. Bisson Frères placed small human figures on the snow and included footprints, long distances across the slope, and broad areas of empty snow, establishing a ratio between human bodies and the mountain. In The Met’s The Ascent of Mont Blanc, the composition gives Parisian viewers concrete visual cues for imagining distance and danger at altitude.^*1 The BnF preserves groups of photographs made at different distances—glaciers, distant views, and climbing scenes—so that a single mountain can be followed through successive degrees of approach.^*22 The difficulty of transporting large equipment and the human scale visible in the images together communicate how large and inaccessible the site was.

Architectural Publishing, Mont Blanc, and the Bissons’ Place in Photographic History

Bisson Frères occupies an important place in photographic history because the studio joined the precision of large-format photography to a business model that could publish, sell, and reuse images over time. Architectural photographs appeared in installments, making buildings from different cities and periods comparable through plates of the same large format. Contemporary projects such as the new Louvre were photographed alongside historic monuments, accumulating records of old and new architecture within the same publishing enterprise.^*21 After the studio failed financially, negatives passed to other printers; The Met’s Saint-Ursin photograph survives in a print made by the successor Eugène Placet.^*2 A large negative remained an asset after the original exposure, capable of generating new prints and sales, so the photograph’s value extended into the longer time of publication and circulation.