Effet de Givre (The Effect of Frost) 1853

Curator: This is Édouard Loydreau’s “Effet de Givre,” or "The Effect of Frost," taken in 1853, using the albumen print process. It’s a fascinating example of early landscape photography. Editor: It’s haunting. The tones are so soft, almost velvety. And the composition, with the strange pyramidal structure, gives it this otherworldly quality, like a forgotten place. Curator: The albumen print would have been created from a glass negative, painstakingly coated with albumen – that’s egg white – and silver salts. That process yields those rich, detailed tones we’re admiring. Think about the labour involved in producing a single print like this, it really underscores photography’s value in that era. Editor: And the subject matter itself…the inclusion of industrial or agricultural architecture next to humble rural building is striking for the period. These structures, frozen over, appear as a monument to a changing French landscape during the nineteenth century. Consider how such an image might have been received then, amid rapid industrialization and social upheaval. Curator: Exactly. This image highlights photography's shift to challenge conventional art, capturing textures and a tactile reality unavailable with contemporary painting techniques, a fact enhanced by the visible wear and tear of its materiality as object over a century and a half. Editor: Do you find that the social impact of these technological advancements, and the changing landscape they enable, would alter and make newly political something simple, such as a field? Curator: I think so. Realism in photography, like realism in painting, made everyday scenes… socially salient, making them subjects for the national conscious and potential material advancement. It forces a discourse over whose lives have importance or not. Editor: Food for thought... Curator: Indeed. Looking at “Effet de Givre”, what begins as a still photograph can develop to represent rapid shifts in material condition. Editor: Very powerful! It is strange to imagine our world as perceived over the intervening years for this once still life.