[Plaster Casts of Bishops' Miters, South Porch, Chartres]

Charles Nègre French

Not on view

When early photographers turned to the material world of things, it was often to document property or record cultural heritage.Their efforts reveal the camera’s remarkable capacity to abstract and transform the objects before its lens. In 1855, Charles Nègre accepted a commission to make architectural studies of Chartres Cathedral as part of a larger initiative to preserve and promote French patrimony. A complement to his sweeping views of sculpted facades, this still life monumentalizes the site’s smaller details. It shows plaster replicas of ecclesiastical headgear, taken from the cathedral exterior. These are simulacra of simulacra, yet Nègre recasts them anew, registering their textured surfaces in a splendid study of shadow and mass.

[Plaster Casts of Bishops' Miters, South Porch, Chartres], Charles Nègre (French, 1820–1880), Salted paper print from paper negative

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