[Organ Grinder at 21, quai Bourbon, Ile Saint-Louis, Paris]

Amidst a rapidly changing urban landscape, Charles Nègre photographed traditional street people. The itinerant musician, stooped slightly from the weight of his instrument, is about to enter a door. One foot stands on the step and his hand rests upon the doorknob. In comparison with André-Adolphe-Eugene Disdéri's Organ-Grinder (link to 90.Xm.56.4) made around the same time, this musician is depicted at the weary end of a day's labor rather than playing his instrument.

Because exposure times in the 1850s prevented much spontaneity, Charles Nègre had to pose his subject upon the threshold in a stance that the organ-grinder could maintain for the duration of the exposure. The vignette effect of the print's darkened edges was a technical sacrifice that Nègre accepted in order to shorten his exposure time. Serving also as a frame for the subject, the dark rim draws the viewer's attention to the isolated figure and produces a more focused image.

Both Nègre and Disdéri heroicized the workingman a decade before Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet did so in painting. In the process, they aligned themselves with the Realist movement in art and literature.

Adapted from getty.edu, Interpretive Content Department, 2008; and Weston Naef, The J. Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Photographs Collection (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), 57, © 1995 The J. Paul Getty Museum.