Speed

Allegorical study of kinetic energy, c. 1904, executed in gum bichromate during the pre-bromoil decade in which Demachy asserted the supremacy of pigmentary handwork over straight photography. Speed was exhibited at the Photo-Club de Paris — the institution Demachy co-founded with Maurice Bucquet, whose first Salon de Paris opened in 1894 and became the European counterweight to the British Linked Ring, into which Demachy was elected in 1895. Banker by inheritance, Demachy never had to earn a living and devoted himself entirely to pictorialism, frequenting the literary salons that brought him close to Alphonse Daudet and his sons Léon and Lucien. Technically the print is a multiple-coat gum bichromate: each layer is a tinted gum arabic sensitised with potassium bichromate, exposed under the negative and selectively brushed back, the operator subtracting matter where the modern aesthetic demanded it. The result is a velvety, charcoal-like surface where the body in motion becomes a sculpted mass of pigment rather than a recorded silhouette — a deliberate refusal of the chronophotographic experiments of Étienne-Jules Marey, then circulating in scientific Paris. The original is preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, France's photographic memory institution and the repository where Demachy deposited a substantial part of his archive. At Maison Picturale, this allegory of motion is re-transposed in non-toxic gum bichromate following the chemistry reformulated by Vision Picturale — bichromate replaced by a non-classified sensitiser — printed on 640 g/m² cotton paper to carry the historic pigmentary load without the sanitary hazard the master never had a choice about.

Reference file : Wikimedia Commons