“Lens of Expression: The ‘Je Photo’ Experience”


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The exhibition Who’s Afraid of Women Photographers? (1839-1945) showcased at the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie in 2015 marked an important step toward the acknowledgment of female artists in France. Among the numerous photographers highlighted was Gabrielle Hébert (1853, Dresden, Germany – 1934, La Tronche, France). Originally named Gabrielle von Uckermann, she was an amateur painter prior to marrying Ernest Hébert in 1880, an established artist who was appointed Director of the French Academy in Rome on two occasions. She subsequently embarked on a vigorous and highly productive photography career, initiated at Villa Medici in 1888 and concluding two decades later in La Tronche (near Grenoble) following the passing of the man she had revered, who was nearly forty years her senior, and whose stature in history she significantly helped secure by endorsing the establishment of two dedicated museums.

In the late 19th century, amidst France and Italy, like numerous painters and writers (including Henri Rivière, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Émile Zola) who took up a camera to document their own and their family’s everyday experiences, Gabrielle Hébert engaged in a private and sentimental photography practice, aided by the technical and aesthetic shift instigated by the advent of snapshot photography. At Villa Medici, as the director’s spouse, she hosted receptions and welcomed distinguished guests. Nonetheless, she quickly evaded her designated responsibilities and acquired a camera. After taking a few lessons from a Roman professional and collaborating with a contemporaneous resident, she established a darkroom to develop and print her negatives while retouching the outcomes. This marked the commencement of a remarkably substantial body of work, which she diligently recorded in her diaries. Hardly a day elapsed without her capturing a snapshot, mingling them with annotations that reveal her photographic process: “Je photo…. Je photographie…”.

While Gabrielle Hébert shared her passion for social portraits and tableaux vivants with Luigi and Giuseppe Primoli, Princess Mathilde Bonaparte’s nephews and innovators of snapshot photography in Italy, she independently explored various photographic genres at Villa Medici, including nudes, reproductions of art, landscapes, still lifes, and “photographic recreations”… Offering a perspective of a permanent resident captivated by the palace, the location, and its inhabitants (resident artists, staff, models, dogs, and cats) as experienced from the inside and throughout different seasons, her output unveils a thoroughly unrecognized aspect of life in that artistic community. Her “visual diary” stands as the pioneering photo-report of daily existence in the institution, a centre for residencies, training, and creation by recipients of the Grand Prix de Rome (many of whose creations are now preserved by the Musée d’Orsay) along with serving as a laboratory for the newly forged political relationship between France and Italy, which had recently been “unified” (1861) and where Rome became the capital in 1871. It also stands as a unique testament to one of the first creator couples at Villa Medici. Even though Gabrielle aided Ernest in his artistic endeavors by posing for him, preparing his canvases, retouching his artworks, and even replicating them, it was Ernest himself who captured the photographer’s genuine interest. Defying gender norms, she observed him with fascination and took endless photographs of him. Sessions with sitters, developments in his paintings, moments of sociability with guests, and interactions with residents, alongside strolls in the Roman countryside, bathing in the sea, and solitary moments in his office: all these facets of the life of artist, director, and husband Ernest Hébert were examined and documented. Upon their permanent return to France, Gabrielle ceased to nourish her fervor for photography, a passion ignited in Italy and during her exile, yet she continued to photograph Hébert until the end of his life, determined to immortalize him through visuals. Prior to that, in 1898, she broke free from the confining environment shaped by the Renaissance Palace and its unconventional inhabitants, executing her photographic farewell during a journey to Spain, which she documented with a distinctly modern perspective influenced by the nascent days of cinema.

This chronological-thematic exhibition, tracing Gabrielle Hébert’s photographic origins (1888) to her final images (1908), aims to showcase what she made of photography and what photography revealed to her. Through her images, which she shared and exchanged among her friends and family, she gained recognition as an auteur and elevated her social standing in a realm primarily dominated by male artistic creations. However, more crucially, photography allowed her to discover herself: by capturing a particularly exceptional geography and period, she effectively crafted her own mythology. In doing so, she became Villa Medici’s inaugural photographic chronicler and secured her place in the history of the medium.

The majority of the works featured in the exhibition are original prints (in 9 x 12 cm format), as well as photo albums assembled by Gabrielle Hébert, her diaries, collections of glass plates, and the cameras she utilized. Enlargements made from negatives that she never printed will further enrich the display. The journey will be complemented by sketches and paintings by Ernest Hébert, along with sentimental mementos (palette, medallion, and letters), reflecting a narrative of love for a man and a homeland.


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