It took 151 years for much of the work done by the French photographer Jules Ainaud to receive the just recognition it deserves, both from artistic historiography and from the public. Until now, the only time his images taken in Catalonia in 1871 and 1872 had been shown was in an exhibition at the Barcelona Ateneu during the summer of 1972. At that time, it was taken for granted that those works, property of the prestigious photographic house of Jean Laurent, corresponded to him. However, the actual authorship was by one of his collaborators.
The Fundación MAPFRE KBr center is hosting the exhibition La Catalunya by Jules Ainaud (1871-1872) until September 3, which brings together an outstanding collection of images, with Catalonia as the setting, made by Ainaud at the request of the businessman and also photographer Jean Laurent, whose photographic business established in Spain was one of the most important in the country. “Since the middle of the 19th century, photography on paper began to reveal itself as a real business possibility with a future”, explains the curator of the exhibition Jep Martí.
In its beginnings, Jean Laurent sold portraits of the royal family and famous or popular personalities, and in the early 1860s it began to disseminate reproductions of works of art, views of cities, landscapes, monumental architecture, public works and popular customs. The company’s last catalogue, from 1879, contained nearly 5,000 images. The business prospered and Laurent had to hire more photographers for field work. It is at this moment that Ainaud appears.
Born in 1837 in Lunel, an Occitan municipality in Llanguedoc, Ainaud worked in various towns throughout Spain from 1863 to 1900, the year of his death in Barcelona. It is possible that, like other European artists, intellectuals and travelers, both he and Laurent were drawn to Spain as an exotic destination. And it is that the country fulfilled the romantic ideals thanks to its Islamic imprint, the backwardness in the infrastructures, the political instability and the attachment to the traditions.
Based in Barcelona, ??Ainaud worked as a portrait painter and also on behalf of other photographers, capturing images of places of artistic interest. Hence, his name has gone unnoticed by history until very recently and his activity is still under investigation. In addition, as the experts point out, unlike what we currently consider, in the 19th century, more than the authorship, what was relevant was the ownership of the images.
Actually, Ainaud’s production for the J. Laurent house was very large, also covering the Spanish Levante. So far, 430 commissions by the photographer for J. Laurent have been documented. The prestigious house marketed 204 plaques that Ainaud impressed in Catalonia and more than a hundred of these can be seen in the exhibition put together by Fundación MAPFRE. The images range from the Ebro to numerous enclaves of Barcelona and panoramic views of the city, as well as places such as Tortosa, Tarragona, the monasteries of Poblet and Santes Creus and the monastery and the mountain of Montserrat.
In times of digital snapshots that accumulate on our mobile devices without waiting to be revealed, the craftsmanship carried out by Jules Ainaud takes on extraordinary value. Photography was taking his first steps and he, like the rest of his colleagues, had to carry a portable laboratory that revealed the glass plates in wet collodion. The technique invented by Gustave Le Gray, considered the Monet of photography, was not easy, but his results have managed to stand the test of time with integrity.
Along with the hundred copies on paper in various formats, the public who come to see Ainaud’s work will also be able to contemplate stereoscopic views, reproductions of those negatives on glass plates that allow them to appreciate the richness of image detail, an oil on cloth and other documents such as letters about his tour of Catalonia and several albums. If something defines her work, it is the precision of the images, their pictorial effect and her architectural vision. Ainaud, far from wanting to show his personal stamp, sought to capture those places of artistic interest through photography. But, 151 years later, the result exceeded his expectations.
