Émile Joachim Constant Puyo (November 12, 1857 – October 6, 1933) was a French photographer, active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As the leading advocate of the
Pictorialist
Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer ha ...
movement in France, he championed the practice of photography as an artistic medium.
[Souren Melikian,]
Photography's Early and Unsung Pioneers
" ''New York Times'', 22 January 2010. Retrieved: 23 November 2011. For most of his career, Puyo was associated with the Photo Club of Paris, serving as its president from 1921 to 1926.
, Archives Photographique – Portraits et Spectacles. Retrieved: 23 November 2011. His photographs appeared in numerous publications worldwide, and were exhibited at various expositions in the 1900s.
Biography
Puyo was born to a prominent bourgeois family in
Morlaix
Morlaix (; br, Montroulez) is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in northwestern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department.
Leisure and tourism
The old quarter of the town has winding streets of cobbled stones and overha ...
in 1857.
[Hélène Jagot,]
Constant Puyo (1857–1933): Entre Volonté d’Art et Intuition Photographique
," 2008. Retrieved: 23 November 2011. His father, Edmond Puyo (1828–1916), was a painter, amateur archaeologist, and politician, who served as Mayor of Morlaix in the 1870s. His uncle,
Édouard Corbière, was a best-selling author, and his cousin,
Tristan Corbière
Tristan Corbière (18 July 1845 – 1 March 1875), born Édouard-Joachim Corbière, was a French poet born in Coat-Congar, Ploujean (now part of Morlaix) in Brittany, where he lived most of his life before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 29 ...
, was a well-known poet.
Puyo studied at the
École Polytechnique
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
before joining the French Army as an artillery officer, rising to the rank of
commandant
Commandant ( or ) is a title often given to the officer in charge of a military (or other uniformed service) training establishment or academy. This usage is common in English-speaking nations. In some countries it may be a military or police ran ...
during his career,
and commanding a squadron at the School of Artillery at
La Fère
La Fère () is a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in France.
Population
See also
* Communes of the Aisne department
The following is a list of the 799 communes in the French department of Aisne.
The communes coope ...
.
He served with the French Army in
Algeria
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during the 1880s.
Puyo began drawing at a young age.
[Constant Puyo]
. Centre Atlantique de la Photographie. Retrieved: 23 November 2011. Around 1882, he started using cameras to photograph his drawings.
Fascinated with cameras, he began using photography to document his various travels in North Africa.
By the following decade, he had become one of a growing number of photographers who believed photography was itself a form of high art, in the same manner as other art forms such as painting or sculpture.
These photographers formed what became known as the Pictorialist movement.
In 1894, Puyo joined the Photo Club of Paris, which had been founded by Maurice Bacquet, and helped organize a
Salon for the club.
He wrote several articles for the club's ''Bulletin'', establishing himself as the chief theoretician of the French Pictorialist movement.
[Emma de Lafforest,]
Constant Puyo (1857–1933): Entre une Volonté d’Art et une Intuition Photographique
." Retrieved: 23 November 2011. In 1896, he published his first book, ''Notes sur la Photographie Artistique'', which explained how photography could be used to create works of art.
Following his retirement from the military in 1902, Puyo was able to devote himself more fully to photography.
In an effort to achieve greater artistic effects, Puyo and the Photo Club experimented with
gum bichromate
Gum bichromate is a 19th-century photographic printing process based on the light sensitivity of dichromates. It is capable of rendering painterly images from photographic negatives. Gum printing is traditionally a multi-layered printing process, ...
and oil pigment processes,
and developed special soft-focus lenses that achieved impressionistic effects.
Puyo wrote or co-wrote several books for the club during this period describing these processes in detail.
After World War I, the decline of Pictorialism in favor of straight, unmanipulated photographs was a source of continuing frustration for Puyo. As president of the Photo Club during the 1920s, he remained passionately dedicated to the Pictorial style.
Puyo retired as Photo Club president in 1926, and returned to his home in Morlaix.
He died in 1933, and is interred with his family at the Cemetière Saint-Martin-du-Morlaix.
Works
Photographs
Puyo believed that for a photograph to be considered art, it must create a beauty independent of the subject,
and thus believed art photographers should be more concerned with beauty rather than fact.
[Naomi Rosenblum, ''A World History of Photography'' (New York: Cross River Press, 1984), pp. 297, 309–315.] He considered the manipulation of a photograph to be an expression of individuality, and believed that manipulation was necessary to eliminate the sense that the photograph was produced by an unemotional machine.
Common themes in Puyo's photographs include landscapes, female figures in various poses, and various aspects of late 19th-century Parisian life.
He was greatly influenced by artistic movements of the day, especially
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
. One of Puyo's better known works, ''Montmartre'', was inspired by
Edvard Munch's ''Rue Lafayette''.
Art Nouveau patterns appear in many of Puyo's photographs of women.
Puyo's work has been exhibited at museums such as the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, the
Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Works by Museum: The Philadelphia Museum of Art
Retrieved: 23 November 2011. and the Centre Atlantique de la Photographie in Brest
Brest may refer to:
Places
*Brest, Belarus
**Brest Region
**Brest Airport
**Brest Fortress
* Brest, Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria
* Břest, Czech Republic
*Brest, France
** Arrondissement of Brest
**Brest Bretagne Airport
** Château de Brest
*Br ...
. A large number of Puyo's photographs are on display at the Morlaix Museum, founded by his father in the 1870s.
Literature
*''Notes sur la Photographie Artistique'' (1896)
*''Le Procédé à la Gomme Bichromatée'' (1904)
*''Les Objectifs d'Artiste'' (1906), coauthored with Jean Leclerc de Pulligny
*''Les Procédés d'Art en Photographie'' (1906), coauthored with Robert Demachy
Robert Demachy (1859–1936) was a prominent French Pictorial photographer of the late 19th and early 20th century. He is best known for his intensely manipulated prints that display a distinct painterly quality.
Life
Early years (1859–1875)
...
*''Le Procédé Rawlins à l'Huile'' (1907)
*''Comment Composer un Portrait'' (1925)
Gallery
Image:Constant Puyo10.jpg
Image:Ete-constant-puyo.jpg
Image:Puyo11.jpg
Image:Fantasie en blanc.jpg
See also
*Pierre Dubreuil
Pierre Dubreuil (March 5, 1872 – January 9, 1944) was a French photographer, born in Lille, who spent his career in France and Belgium. As a pioneer of modernist photography, Dubreuil embraced innovative techniques and ideas that were celebrate ...
*Alfred Horsley Hinton
Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863 – 25 February 1908) was an English landscape photographer, best known for his work in the pictorialist movement in the 1890s and early 1900s. As an original member of the Linked Ring and editor of ''The Amateur Ph ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Puyo, Constant
1857 births
1933 deaths
People from Morlaix
École Polytechnique alumni
19th-century French photographers