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Émile Joachim Constant Puyo was both a photographer and a theoretician. In 1896, he wrote "Notes sur la photographie artistique," the first of many articles and books on equipment processes that he would publish throughout his career.

Puyo developed special lenses to create impressionistic effects in his landscapes, in his genre scenes, and especially in his portraits of fashionable women, of which "The Straw Hat" is an example. This image, with its extensive manipulation, is also typical of his female subjects' elegance and grace. Like their British and American fin-de-siècle counterparts, French secessionists, Puyo among them, led the crusade for the acceptance of photography as art.

Puyo was instrumental in developing a number of pigment processes, including gum bichromate, oil transfer, and (in the case of "The Straw Hat") oil pigment. Like a painter, Puyo proudly affixed his circular monogram to this image, which epitomized his impressionist pictorial aesthetic.

Details

  • Title: The Straw Hat
  • Creator: Émile Joachim Constant Puyo (French, b.1857, d.1933)
  • Creator Lifespan: 1857/1933
  • Creator Nationality: French
  • Creator Gender: Male
  • Creator Death Place: Morlaix, France
  • Creator Birth Place: Morlaix, France
  • Date Created: Circa 1905 - Circa 1910
  • Location Created: France
  • Physical Dimensions: 10 7/8 x 8 1/4 in. (27.6 x 21 cm)
  • Credit Line: Museum Purchase: Gift of John Sanborn Conner, by exchange
  • Alternate Title: Woman Wearing Hat
  • Type: Photograph
  • Medium: Oil pigment print
  • Accession Number: 1981.154

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