Posthumous Portrait of Alphonse Poitevin

Posthumous tribute portrait of Louis-Alphonse Poitevin (1819-1882) published in the Bulletin de la Société française de photographie in 1883, one year after his death — a printed homage by the institution that had awarded him its Duc de Luynes Prize in 1862 for his work on photolithography, and that conserves in its archives many of his foundational documents. The Société française de photographie, founded in Paris on 15 November 1854, was throughout the second half of the 19th century the leading learned society of photographic research in France and the body before which Poitevin had presented, in 1855, the experiments establishing the photosensitivity of pigmented colloids — the discovery from which sprang his three patents on gum bichromate, the carbon process and photolithography, all filed the same year. The Bulletin de la SFP, published continuously from 1855 onward, served both as scientific journal and as obituarist for the founders of the medium. This 1883 plate, today freely available on Wikimedia Commons from the Bulletin scans, fixes the canonical image of Poitevin transmitted by the photographic community of his time: chemist of the École Centrale (class of 1843), industrial director of the salt works of Dieuze, Montmorot and Gouhenans, mayor of Conflans-sur-Anille (1871-1878), Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (24 January 1863). As a posthumous reproduction in a learned journal, the work does not lend itself to a direct Maison Picturale process transposition, but stands as a historical and biographical reference plate, free of copyright since 1953, accompanying the studio's interpretations of Poitevin's other plates and photolithographs.

Reference file : Bulletin SFP 1883 / Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)