About This Artwork

Auguste Salzmann
French, 1824–1872

Jerusalem, Valley of Josaphat, Tomb of St. James (Jérusalem, Vallée de Josaphat, Tombeau de Saint Jacques), 1854, printed 1856

Salted paper print
23.4 x 32.2 cm
Restricted gift of Helen Harvey Mills in memory of her mother Kathleen W. Harvey, 1980.215

Photography
Not on Display

An amateur archaeologist trained as a painter, Auguste Salzmann learned photography in order to document archaeological finds in the field. He traveled to Jersualem in 1853, photographing holy sites for a year, until he was stricken by fever and forced to return home with some 150 paper negatives. The resulting prints were published in 1856 by the noted printer Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard as a tourist album on the monuments of Jerusalem, available for purchase by the public; in the introduction, Salzmann wrote, "Photographs are not reports, but rather conclusive brute facts." Despite this assertion, his choice of medium did act as a vehicle of interpretation: the salted paper print gave a somewhat softened, textured appearance to the stone ruins, increasing the suggestion of nostalgia latent in the combination of archeology and tourism.