Behind the Scenes of the Opera 311/500
X.040.01
Robert Demachy was a prominent French photographer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Demachy produced and promoted Pictorialism (a type of photography that self-consciously evoked drawing and painting) in part to distinguish his pictures from the products of amateur snap shooters and commercial photographers. The gum bichromate process used to print this image allowed the artist to introduce color and brushwork into the photograph. He is best known for his intensely manipulated prints that display a distinct painterly quality. Demachy also wrote extensively on the topic of photography and over his lifetime produced more than one thousand articles on the aesthetics and techniques of manipulated prints.