[Umbrella Pines, Southern France]
Charles Nègre French
Not on view
Charles Nègre frames his view of the southern French landscape beneath a curving canopy of umbrella pines. He made this photograph in the course of a larger effort to catalogue the monuments and scenery of the Midi region, but it departs from the conventions of that project and never appeared in his published portfolio. Absent of identifiable geography or important architecture, the scene gives little sense of local history; Nègre instead trained his eye on a more mundane view, creating interest within the lens. Crisper than his prints from paper negatives, this picture is among Nègre’s earliest experiments with collodion-coated glass negatives. Flaws in the collodion led to the surreal effect visible in the rightmost treetops—a testament to the challenges of the new technique, which the photographer would later master.
