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Exposition universelle de 1889 / État d'avancement

Creator

French Photographer · 1839–1917

Louis-Émile Durandelle was one half of a photographic team with Hyacinthe César Delmaet from 1854 until 1862. After their partnership dissolved, Durandelle continued to photograph, specializing in photographs of architecture, particularly public buildings, in France throughout the 1860s. He photographed the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel and the construction of the Théâtre de Monte Carlo. In 1870 and

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Date: November 23, 1888
Medium: Albumen silver print
Culture: French
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

The Centennial Exposition of 1889 was organized by the French government to commemorate the French Revolution. Bridge engineer Gustave Eiffel's 984-foot (300-meter) tower of open-lattice wrought iron was selected in a competition to erect a memorial at the exposition. Twice as high as the dome of St. Peter's in Rome or the Great Pyramid of Giza, nothing like it had ever been built before. This view was made about four months short of the tower's completion. Louis-Émile Durandelle photographed the tower from a low vantage point to emphasize its monumentality. The massive building barely visible in the far distance is dwarfed under the tower's arches. Incidentally, the tower's innovative glass-cage elevators, engineered to ascend on a curve, were designed by the Otis Elevator Company of New York, the same company that designed the Getty Center's diagonally ascending tram.

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