Art Institute of Chicago

Fountain at St. Sulpice

Charles Marville

Date

1851

Medium

Salted paper print

Culture

France

Department

Photography and Media

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Charles Marville is best known for his photographs of Paris at a time of enormous change, documenting its transformation from a dark, crowded city into one of grand boulevards and public parks. This picture, made in the year Marville began taking photographs, shows the monumental fountain just outside the church of Saint-Sulpice, which had been completed only a few years earlier. Marville produced his negative on paper, which lends the image a grainy softness that many photographers in his day prized over the sharper quality found in metal-plate daguerreotypes and glass negatives.

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