The exhibition of photographs from the collection of Clémentine Foundation (France) will introduce to the Russian audience forty original prints dating back to mid-XIX century and made by the classics of photography: Charles Nègre, Henri Le Secq, Charles Marville, Edouard Baldus, Felix Nadar, Eugene Disdéri, Etienne Carjat, Pierre Petit and other well known masters.

Having replaced the silver daguerreotype plates in the middle of XIX century, paper prints brought photography closer to graphic art. Grey, brown, burgundy and other color shades of salted paper and albumine paper prints reminded of the noble techniques of pencil, charcoal and sanguine drawing. It is in that time that monochromatic photographic prints on paper served for artists as new source for the study of nature and helped develop their drawing skills. Still, few were ready to openly acknowledge photography, although photographic studies were vastly used in the production of paintings (still-lives, pictures of human body, elements of landscape, architectural details). Among well known painters only Eugene Delacroix, one of the founders of the Heliographic Society (1851), openly supported the new art.

Clémetine Foudation gives us a rare opportunity to see these unique photographs (among them self-portrait of E.Delacroix, portrait of Emil Zola, E.Disderi's photographic collage fitting 321 characters into a 6 by 10 cm print, paper negatives of E.Baldus and F.Petiot-Groffier) that are at the same time priceless evidences of the history of photogrpahy.

The exhibition "Colors of Early French Photography" gives food for thought especially in the field of historiosophy. The images require slow and thoughtful peering, contextual comprehension of each of them.

The exhibition will be accompanied with a seminar (also prepared in collaboration with Clémentine Foundation) dedicated to the history of early French photography. The seminar will be held at ROSPHOTO in the middle of October, with participation of leading French specialists.