[Machines for the Textile Industry, Pierrard-Parpaite, Reims]

1858

Not on view

In this album, a series of portraits outlines a new future for the French textile industry. They are not occupational portraits: the subjects are not workers, but rather machines. In them, cutting-edge devices for wool carding and spinning are handsomely posed before the camera, hulking over their human operators. The album, commissioned by the manufacturer Pierrard-Parpaite of Reims, highlights the scale and sophistication of the new enterprise, and boasts of the firm’s recent triumphs at the 1855 World’s Fair. Already in these early salt prints, bold iron brackets and sequential rows of spindles appear strikingly graphic, seeming to anticipate the industrial eye of modern photography in the decades to follow. The Breton photographer Auguste Jugelet, better known today as a painter of seascapes, here harnesses the potential of less natural subjects.

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Provenance

Title: [Machines for the Textile Industry, Pierrard-Parpaite, Reims]
Artist: Auguste Jean Marie Jugelet (French, Brest 1805–1874 Rouen)
Date: 1858
Medium: Album of 18 salt prints from glass negatives
Dimensions: Image: from 3 3/4 × 4 13/16 in. (9.6 × 12.3 cm) to 3 1/4 × 8 11/16 in. (8.3 × 22.1 cm), each
Overall: 8 7/8 × 12 3/8 × 5/8 in. (22.5 × 31.5 × 1.6 cm)
Classifications: Photographs, Albums
Credit Line: Joyce F. Menschel Photography Library Fund, 2025
Object Number: 2025.464
Curatorial Department: Photographs

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Depart de Tréport (Departure from Le Tréport)

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1846

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Adrien Tournachon
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[Large Figures on the North Porch, Chartres Cathedral], Henri-Jean-Louis Le Secq French, Salted paper print from paper negative — [Large Figures on the North Porch, Chartres Cathedral]
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