Getty Museum
Pont du Point du Jour
Creator
Auguste Hippolyte CollardFrench Photographer · 1812–1885
All works by this person →Trained as a wood frame gilder, Hippolyte-Auguste Collard specialized in industrial imagery as a photographer. He set up his first photography studio in January 1856. During the Second Empire, the reign of Napoleon III in France, he ran a photography studio for twenty years, producing sequential photographs of bridges, railroads, and aqueducts. The Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Wor
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1863/1866
- Medium
- Albumen silver print
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- 2ae2a3ef-e4e7-4e1b-905b-672d7d56d3ba
The subject is the Viaduct of Auteuil, an elaborate, two-story, 1,073-meter-long viaduct with 151 arches that spanned the distance between the town of Auteuil and the Point-du-Jour bridge outside Paris. Although the absolute symmetry of the bridge and light posts is compelling and might have attracted another photographer, Hippolyte-Auguste Collard made a less obvious choice, positioning his camera at the end of the Point du Jour, slightly off-center and toward the middle of the right pedestrian arcade. This view establishes an unobstructed line of sight to a point in the far distance, making the viaduct seem infinite. The shadowy sweep of the bridge overhead fans out of the frame like a lopsided crown, while a puddle of water just in front of the left pedestrian passageway, whose arch bears the stains of seeping water, suggests a more mundane problem threatening the impressive structure.
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