Charles Aubry (1811-1877)

CHARLES AUBRY (1811-1877)
CHARLES HIPPOLYTE AUBRY (French, 1811-1877...
CHARLES HIPPOLYTE AUBRY (French, 1811-1877...
Photographs: Charles Hippolyte AUBRY (1811-1877)

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Charles Aubry Biography

(b Paris, 3 June 1811; d Paris, 23 March 1877). French photographer. For more than 30 years Aubry worked as an industrial designer. In January 1864 he formed a Parisian company to manufacture plaster casts and photographs of plants and flowers. Although unsuccessful (he filed for bankruptcy in 1865), he continued to sell photographs to drawing schools throughout the 1870s. His albumen prints are often striking close-ups of natural forms taken with a flat perspective and symmetrical arrangement that was inspired by the lithographic plates traditionally used by industrial design students. The failure of Aubry’s ideas on the use of photographs in the industrial design process can be attributed to both the French government’s reluctance to introduce photography into art schools and the shift in French taste towards more abstract, simplified decorations for manufactured goods. His work is included in the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs and Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA.

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