Cavalry Maneuvres, October 3

From the Getty Museum record

In 1857 Napoleon III commissioned Gustave Le Gray to "record the principal scenes taken from each of the camps of the Guard, and portraits of the officers, generals and superiors, French and foreign, who had traveled to the camp, be they commanders or guests of the emperor" at the Camp de Châlons, a military encampment east of Paris at Châlon-sur-Marne. It was established for the staff and twenty-five thousand troops of the Imperial Guard, which had been formed in 1855 as "an army of the Orient" for the war in the Crimea. The photographs were put into albums that the emperor presented to each general. The Imperial Guard's presence for six weeks was conceived of as a military showplace during which the Guard executed eleven defense maneuvers of increasing complexity. The maneuvers were highly theatrical, almost choreographed. Here troops execute a maneuver behind a field bulwark. The spare tranquility and the enveloping cloud of dust indicate a moment either just before or after "a rapid, violent, and tumultuous engagement." Seen at a distance, the troops seem almost incidental to the wide expanses of dark ground and empty sky.