Pierre Brochet, Sidi Bou Said

Pierre Brochet (1922-2016)
Sidi Bou Said
Heliogravure by Pierre Brochet bearing his dry stamp
Image: 29 x 23 cm; Sheet: 65.5 x 50.5 cm
Bibliography: Pierre Brochet, Musée Nicéphore Niépce, 1981

Pierre Brochet, born in Auxerre on December 10, 1922, spent his childhood on the family estate, surrounded by five brothers and sisters. He came from a wealthy family whose father was a painter and playwright. His brother François was also a famous sculptor in Auxerre. After taking his baccalauréat, his steps led him to the family nursery in Vitry, near Paris, where his future as a landscape gardener took shape. This was to go hand in hand with photography, his great passion from 1937 onwards.

In the photographic landscape of the eighties, there was a growing desire among practitioners of this art to free themselves from the industry, as the quality of paper was no longer what it once was. Everyone strove to compensate for these disadvantages by looking for other ways, which old literature or course manuals could offer clueless practitioners: charcoal, platinum, grease inks, gum bichromate, bends, pinhole.

Pierre Brochet's name often comes up in discussions with specialists who wish to approach him to ask about these abandoned processes, to which he seems to hold all the keys. In 1981, a retrospective exhibition was held at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône. The following year, Brochet led a workshop on carbon printing. The resurrection of old processes had just begun.

In 1983, he set up his own heliographic engraving workshop and produced a portfolio of ten engraved plates based on Charles Nègre's original prints.
The Association pour la photographie ancienne (APA) was a natural outcome of these favorable circumstances. Brochet, as a French specialist in old photographic processes (gum bichromate, charcoal and platinum prints), was its founder. With his troops in hand, he offers a wide range of courses to help revive these little-known techniques.

Pierre Brochet's preference is for heliographic engraving, where he is an authority. In addition to his own images, he has put his talent at the service of the greatest photographers (Salgado, Weiss, Dieuzaide, Nègre, Atget), enhancing their work with prints on the finest art paper, guaranteeing an almost palpable image, with striking relief, eternal thanks to the quality of the pigments it contains.

"In original etching or photographic copperplate aquatint, manual wiping and crushing by the press rollers modify the plates and, consequently, the proofs. Some issues will be preferred to others by enthusiasts."

For the APA, Brochet produced a portfolio of seventy copies: Appel aux sources, a polemical plea to help little-known photographic processes, featuring thirty gravure prints made in his studio and signed by the authors. In 2004, with Béatrice Seguin, he published Mariette en Egypte ou la métamorphose des ruines.

Pierre Brochet in public collections

Carnavalet Museum, Paris
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Center Pompidou, Paris
Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris
Rodin Museum, Paris
Monet's House, Giverny
Musée Nicéphore Niepce, Chalon-sur-Saône
Photo Elysée - Musée cantonal pour la photographie, Lausanne
Musée français de la photographie, Bièvres
Galerie Le Château d'Eau, Toulouse
Center national de la photographie, Paris
Ecole nationale supérieure de photographie, Arles
Center photographique d'Ile de France
Mission du Patrimoine, Paris
Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière, Saint-Mandé
Cities of Montpellier, Pithiviers, Saint Florentin, Grasse

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