Maxime Du Camp

Maxime Du Camp French, 1822-1894 Maxime Du Camp's only known photographic work is a series of calotypes of the Middle East taken in 1849-50 in the company of Gustave Flaubert. Born in Paris, Du Camp was a traveler and soldier, as well as a writer, artist, and editor. His adventurousness and outspoken opinions were thought to be representative of the progressive modernists who made up the younger generation of his day. Du Camp's voyage to the Middle East resulted in 220 calotype negatives, 125 of which were published by Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Évrard in the illustrated Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie (1852). He also published a prose volume, Souvenirs et paysages de l'Orient (1848). Du Camp had been dissatisfied with his artistic ability to record information during his previous travels, and in early 1849 he learned the waxed paper photographic process from Gustave Le Gray, perfecting it for his own use while in Egypt. Alexis de Lagrange assisted Du Camp by instructing him in Blanquart-Évrard's recent improvements. A decorated French counterrevolutionary in 1848, he joined Giuseppe Garibaldi in Italy in 1860. In later years he continued to travel, edit, and write, his views having become more conventional and conservative. In 1880 Du Camp was elected a member of the Académie française; he died 14 years later in the fashionable resort of Baden-Baden. T.W.F.