During his 30-year career, he invented the direct positive process and several other photographic techniques on paper.
Hippolyte Bayard: A Persistent Pioneer, on view April 9–July 7, 2024, at the Getty Center, presents a rare chance to view examples of Bayard’s pioneering work, all made between the 1830s and 1860s. Most of these photographs come from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Bayard album, one of the first photographic albums ever created.
This exhibition will be the first to highlight one of the Getty Museum’s rarest and most treasured photographic holdings: a collection of prints by Hippolyte Bayard, and to explore his early processes, subjects, and strategies to achieve recognition.
“This exhibition provides a new understanding of this pioneering artist and his very significant contribution to the early development of the photographic medium,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “The Getty Museum’s collection of over 200 prints is the second largest holding of Bayard’s work in the world, a highlight of which is our treasured Bayard album.”
Bayard began experimenting in January 1839, the same month in which Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s daguerreotype was introduced in Paris and William Henry Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawing was presented in London. Though Bayard developed an innovative direct-positive photographic process on paper, his work was overshadowed by the inventions of Daguerre and Talbot, two more prominent figures who had the benefit of more established connections.
Because Bayard’s photographs are extremely light sensitive, they have been protected in storage since they came into Getty’s collection in 1984. Conservators conducted microfade tests on a selection to determine which works were stable enough to be put on view for this three-month exhibition period, making this a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Museum visitors.
The exhibition also includes a digital reproduction of the Bayard album so that visitors can experience it in its entirety. Bayard’s self-portrait at his garden gate introduces the content of the album, which contains works from 1839 to the late 1840s, 145 of Bayard’s experiments with different processes on paper, primarily salted paper prints from paper negatives, and 23 works by his British photographic peers. This album offers insights into Bayard’s practice, aesthetic choices, and strategies for presenting himself through the order and arrangement of those photographs. It also offers visual evidence of his exchanges across the English Channel with his fellow British photographers who also promoted paper processes.
Hippolyte Bayard: A Persistent Pioneer is co-curated by Karen Hellman, former associate curator at the Getty Museum and Carolyn Peter, assistant curator in the Department of Photographs at Getty. A publication, Hippolyte Bayard and the Invention of Photography, co-edited by Hellman and Peter accompanies the exhibition. The first book in English devoted to Bayard, it includes over 200 illustrations of Bayard’s photographs, along with a detailed chronology, four extended essays, 12 shorter examinations of single works by Bayard, and a conversation with contemporary photographer, Paul Mpagi Sepuya to compare his studio practice with Bayard’s.