Biographical / Historical
Louis Vignes (1831-1896) was born in Bordeaux, France, where his father was director of the
mint. Vignes entered the École Navale in 1846 at age 15. He rose steadily through the naval
ranks and by 1860 he had directed the building of the port of Beirut and attained the rank
of lieutenant. In 1862, Vignes captained a steamer attached to the division of the coasts of
Syria. By the end of his long and successful naval career Vignes had attained the rank of
vice admiral and had become Inspecteur général de la Marine.
Early in his career Vignes was already practicing photography as an amateur, but how or
where he obtained photographic training is unknown. Between June 1859 and October 1862,
while pursuing his naval duties, Vignes traveled from the south of France to Lebanon via
Sicily, Turkey and the Palestine. During his tour of duty around the Mediterranean basin he
made the 52 calotype negatives of landscapes, monuments, and sites now held in the
Bibliothèque nationale de France (Photographies négatives de Louis Vignes, FRBNF41425799).
That he also photographed naval life as well is evidenced by a group of portraits he made of
himself and his fellow ship's officers in 1859 that are held in the present repository
(accession no. 2016.R.40).
Vignes met Honoré Théodoric d'Albert, duc de Luynes, in October 1863, while the latter was
staying in Hyères, France. Luynes, who was planning his first expedition to the Dead Sea
region, recruited Vignes to serve as the expedition's climatologist and photographer.
Vignes's knowledge of photography, together with his familiarity with Syria and the Middle
East, his demonstrated military leadership, and his navigational skills and knowledge of
astronomy, made him an ideal member of the expedition. Vignes was granted leave from the
navy effective February 1, 1864, and by the ninth of the month he and the other expedition
members had set sail from Marseilles.
The expedition reached Beirut on the twenty-first of February, 1864. There, Vignes took at
least one two-part panorama of the city before the travelers moved on to Jerusalem via Sidon
and Tyr, and then headed to the Dead Sea. The expedition traversed both the west and east
sides of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea in Le Ségor, an
iron boat that could be dismantled and transported by camels, that Luynes had had built in
the shipyards of Seyne, France. Unfortunately, Luynes was compelled to leave the expedition
at Petra on the seventh of June due to illness. Vignes and the other members of the
expedition - geologist Louis Lartet and naturalist Dr. Gustave Combe - completed the
expedition, returning to Beirut on June 24.
Vignes remained in Beirut after the other two men had returned to France, as he still had
another commission to complete for Luynes, that of making a photographic record of the ruins
of ancient Palmyra. After fulfilling his mission in the fall of 1864, Vignes returned to
France. From that time forward he seems to have devoted himself exclusively to his
increasingly important naval positions, and any photographs he may have made after 1864 have
yet to come to light.
Fifty-two of Vignes's photographs from the Dead Sea expedition were reproduced as
photogravures by Charles Nègre for the Atlas of the duke's
account of the expedition, Voyage d'exploration à la mer Morte, à
Petra, et sur la rive gauche du Jourdain, published in 1875, eight years after
Luynes's death. Nègre (1820-1880) had studied with the academicians Paul Delaroche and
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who encouraged him to explore the newly emerging medium of
photography for use as a painting aid. Nègre, who pursued painting, photography, and
printing throughout his career, made his first daguerreotype landscapes in 1844 and began
making calotypes in 1848. In 1851, Nègre became one of the founding members of the Société
Héliographique, the first French organization dedicated to photographic endeavors.
As the photographic aspect of his career progressed, Nègre became known for his
well-crafted heliographs, a type of photogravure, and by 1856 he had patented his own
version of Nicéphore Niépce's heliographic process (héliogravure), which he named
paniconography. His dedication to the perfection of the heliograph was prompted in large
part by his pursuit of the 8,000-franc prize Luynes had announced in 1856 for the invention
of the photomechanical process that could best reproduce photographs for publication. In
1865, when Luynes gave Nègre the negatives Vignes had taken during the expedition, including
those from Palmyra, commissioning him to make both photographic prints and photogravures
from them, the prize had not yet been awarded. Although Luynes himself preferred Nègre's
photogravure process, the independent jury finally awarded the prize to Louis-Alphonse
Poitevin for his photolithographic process in 1867.
Sources consulted:
Aubenas, Sylvie, "Louis Vignes (1831-1896)." BNF Shared Heritage,
Biblothèques d'Orient.
https://heritage.bnf.fr/bibliothequesorient/en/louis-vigne-art
Foliot, Philippe. "Louis Vignes and Henry Sauvaire, Photographers on the Expeditions of the
Duc de Luynes." In History of Photography, 14:3 (1990)
233-250, DOI:10.1080/03087298.1990.10442460.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.1990.10442460
Hellman, Karen Reed. "Le Secq, Henri (Jean-Louis Henri Le Secq des Tournelles), 1818-1882."
In Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, edited by
John Hannavy, II:837-839. London: Taylor & Francis, 2008.
Luynes, Honoré d'Albert, duc de. Voyage d'exploration à la mer
Morte, à Petra, et sur la rive gauche du Jourdain. Paris: Arthus Bertrand,
éditeur, 1874.
Martini, Jean-Mathieu. "At a Crossroads." In Henri Sauvaire
(1831-1896): voyage d'exposition a Hebron, Karak, Djafar, El-Heca, Chaubak, Dausak,
Twahné et Zatt-Rass. Munich: Daniel Blau, 2015.
Montiero, Stephen. "Nègre, Charles (1820-1880)." In Encyclopedia of
Nineteenth-Century Photography, edited by John Hannavy, II:982-985. London: Taylor
& Francis, 2008.
Paviot, Alain. Le voyage du duc de Luynes: photographies de Louis
Vignes, [exposition], 6 mars-13 mai 1980: voyage d'exploration à la mer Morte, à Petra,
et sur la rive gauche du Jourdain, févier-juin 1864. Paris: Galerie Octant, 1980.
Terpak, Fran, "Acquisition Approval Form for 'Louis Vignes (French, 1831-1896), 47
Photographs of Palmyra and Beirut, Albumen Prints, 1864,'" accession no. 2015.R.15, May 20,
2015.
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