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Exhibitions at The Research Libraries Monumental France: The Photographs of Edouard BaldusFrom March 7, 2008 through June 28, 2008  Edouard Baldus came to Paris from Prussia in 1838 to pursue painting, at which he had only very modest success. By 1849 he had turned his attentions to photography, a still-experimental medium that had been introduced only a decade earlier. Baldus was one of five photographers selected by the Commission des Monuments Historiques in 1851 to make surveys of historic sites around France. These Missions Héliographiques, as they were called, were intended to help the Commission determine the preservation and restoration needs at the sites, many of which had never been seen by the Commissioners. Baldus’s itinerary took him south and east where he photographed the Palace of Fontainebleau, Roman monuments and ruins and medieval churches in Provence, Arles, and the Rhône Valley. These photographs won him additional government support, and in the following years he photographed the major monuments of Paris, returned to the southern countryside, and in 1855 documented the construction of the New Louvre. This exhibition presents rare Edouard Baldus photographs from this period. |