Jérusalem, Saint Sépulcre, détails des chapiteaux

Imprimerie photographique de Blanquart-Évrard, à Lille|Auguste Salzmann

1854 · Salted paper print from paper negative · Photographs

Salzmann’s photographs dissect the church’s facade element by element. He recognized the building as a physical manifestation of the multicultural city’s history, during which it changed hands over many centuries: "Destroyed and rebuilt under the strangest circumstances, it offers a meeting of diverse elements that cannot be found elsewhere." He focused on the church’s relationship to French medieval cathedrals, a number of which were then being studied and restored under the direction of architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879). In this photograph, Salzmann isolates the capitals in the center of the main entrance, leaving a fraction of each frieze to link the composition to the previous and following plates. His radical mode of picture making results in photographs that both stand on their own and respond to their context in the album.

Artist

Imprimerie photographique de Blanquart-Évrard, à Lille|Auguste Salzmann

Date

1854

Medium

Salted paper print from paper negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005