Getty Museum
Factory, Terre-Noire
Creator
Gustave Le GrayFrench Photographer · 1820–1884
All works by this person →Though he was trained as a painter, Gustave Le Gray made his mark in the emerging medium of photography. An experimenter and technical innovator, Le Gray pioneered the use of the paper negative in France and developed a waxed-paper negative that produced sharper-focus prints. In 1851 he began to use collodion on glass negatives, which further increased the clarity of his images. He became one of t
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1851–1855
- Medium
- Salted paper print from a paper negative
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Gustave Le Gray recognized that this bleak factory was a highly unusual subject. Heavy industry was rarely a motif for photography in the mid-1800s. Rather than shying away from it, however, he masterfully recorded the blackened foreground and spreading clouds of smoke that veil the deforested hillsides. Le Gray made this picture at Terre-Noire (Black Earth) in central France, an area rich in coal and iron ore, raw materials that are essential for the production of iron and steel.
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