See Tahiti. First photographs 1859-1870
When: 29.09.2026 11:30
Where: 48.861497, 2.297733
Organizer: Admin
In 2023, the museum acquired an exceptional collection of photographs, the first images made in French Polynesia between 1859 and 1870. They are the work of two naval officers, Gustave Viaud and Paul Émile Miot, whose complementary approaches offer a rare testimony of a territory still very little photographed at the time.
The paper negatives of Gustave Viaud, produced between 1859 and 1862, constitute an unpublished corpus, long kept in the Loti Viaud family and then by a private collector. Older brother of Pierre Loti, Viaud plays a major role in the birth of the writer’s taste for elsewhere, but he is also a discreet pioneer of photography. Stationed in Tahiti as a naval surgeon, he quickly experiments with this new medium. His images, ranging from mastered landscapes, familiar topographic scenes and subtle effects of wind on vegetation, reveal a true sense of composition. He also creates in 1859 a remarkable portrait of Teriimaevarua II, queen of Bora Bora.
Ten years later, Paul Émile Miot, an officer already recognized as an accomplished photographer, stays in Tahiti and the Marquesas. Using the collodion glass negative, he captures coasts, landscapes and faces of Polynesian society, notably the royal family. His precise, almost modern gaze gives his compositions a singular strength.
Together, these two series form a striking visual material, predating the massive development of photography in these archipelagos. The exhibition aims to highlight the graphic beauty of the negatives, while presenting enlargements, positives and old prints. Viaud’s images, almost completely unpublished, and those of Miot, never shown in a dedicated exhibition until now, dialogue for the first time in a single itinerary.
Tags: history, exhibition, photography
Source: https://www.paris.fr/evenements/voir-tahiti-premieres-photographies-1859-1870-117921
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