French brazilians
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This exhibition presents a five year-long research on the work of the Monegasque-Brazilian inventor and artist Hercule Florence (1804–79), introducing him for the first time to the European public. The show is curated by Linda Fregni Nagler and Cristiano Raimondi and is followed by a publication with international contributions.
The inventor of Zoophonia, a system for the musical notation of bird songs, and of Polygraphia, a printing method based on the principles of photography, in 1833 Hercule Florence invented in Brazil a photographic process, independently from the contemporary research being carried out in Europe, and was the first to use the word “Photographie”.
This exhibition will show about 400 works, most of them being Hercule Florence’s drawings and manuscripts coming mainly from Collection C. H. Florence – Leila and Silvia Florence (São Paulo). Other private and public institutions have lent significant works : Accademia delle Scienze, Turin ; Archives du Palais Princier, Monaco; Bibliothèque de Genève ; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris ; BU Sc
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Hercule Florence, self-portrait, c. 1875
source: http://www.mnemocine.com.br/fotografia/historia_foto.htm
"Antoine Hercule Romuald Florence (1804–March 27, 1879) was a French-Brazilian painter and inventor, known as the isolate inventor of photography in Brazil, three years before Daguerre (but six years after Nicéphore Niépce), using the matrix negative/positive.
According to Kossoy, who examined Florence's notes, he referred to his process, in French, as photographie in 1834, at least four years before John Herschel coined the English word photography." (from: Hercules Florence - Wikipedia article)
"The notion of simultaneous invention - that two or more people can develop the same concept at about the same time - was mentioned by Florence and by another of photography's pioneer, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877)" observes M. W. Marien: "Simultaneous invention makes it difficult to construct a linear chronology of photography." (Marien, Mary Warner -Photography, A Cultural History , New York: 2002)
In the case of Florence, it brings into the panorama of the emerg
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essays and reflections
The births of Hercule Florence
February 28, February 29, or March 9, 1804. After all, which date was Hercule Florence’s birth? Here we explain the saga to find the real birthday of this traveling artist.
Hercule Florence had just turned twenty when he embarked in Toulon on the frigate Marie Thérèse for a voyage of circumnavigation. After 48 days at sea, he landed in Rio de Janeiro. The story that follows, of the Langsdorff Expedition, of his works and the invention of the photographic process many already know. However, before that? Moreover, if we went back to the year 1804, when Hercule was born, what would we uncover? That the French-Monegasque apparently has at least three dates of birth, one of them being the result of customs from other times, and the other due to a misreading of his birth certificate.
In the manuscript L’Ami des Arts livré à lui-même, written between 1837 and 1859 as an illustrated compendium of his life and work and published in 2018 by the institute that bears his name, Hercule Florence describes his childho
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