Remarkable Portraits of Veterans of the Napoleonic Wars

Napoléon Bonaparte won the vast majority of his battles, building a large empire that ruled over continental Europe before its final collapse in 1815. He is considered one of the greatest commanders in history, and his wars and campaigns are studied at military schools worldwide. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy has endured as one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders in human history.

Napoléon's final defeat was the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Even after his death in 1821, the surviving soldiers of Grande Armée revered his historic leadership. Each year on May 5, the anniversary of Napoléon's death, the veterans marched to Paris' Place Vendôme in full uniform to pay respects to their emperor. These photographs were taken on one of these occasions, possibly in 1858.

All the men — at this time in their 70s and 80s — are wearing the Saint Helena medals, issued in August 1857 to all veterans of the wars of the revolution and the empire. These are the only surviving images of veterans of the Grande Armée and the Guard actually wearing their original uniforms and insignia.

Quartermaster Fabry, 1st Hussars

Sergeant Taria, Grenadiere de la Garde, 1809-1815


Monsieur Vitry, Departmental Guard

Monsieur Dreuse of 2nd Light Horse Lancers of the Guard, c. 1813-14


Grenadier Burg, 24th Regiment of the Guard, 1815

The Place Vendôme was decked out in garlands of immortelles as the old soldiers of the Empire performed their homage

THE TIMES OF LONDON, MAY 1855

Monsieur Moret, 2nd Regiment, 1814-15


Monsieur Dupont, Fourier for the 1st Hussar

Quartermaster Sergeant Delignon, in the uniform of a Mounted Chasseur of the Guard, 1809-1815


Monsieur Maire, 7th Hussars, c. 1809-15

The identity of the photographer is unknown unfortunately.  Some of the images are slightly blurred, which indicates that the men may have found it taxing to remain still for the duration of the exposure, which in the 1850s would have lasted a number of seconds. 

This is the type of camera that was likely used back in 1857:

Wet Plate Camera |1850-1860 | Tailboard | 9x12cm

Monsieur Mauban, 8th Dragoon Regiment, 1815

Monsieur Schmit, 2nd Mounted Chasseur Regiment, 1813-14


Monsieur Lefebre, Sergeant 2nd Regiment of Engineers, 1815


Monsieur Loria, 24th Mounted Chasseur, Regiment Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Monsieur Loria seems to have lost his right eye.
Monsieur Verlinde of the 2nd Lancers, 1815

Stunning Underwater Polaroid Nudes by Ian & Erick Regnard

Ian and Erick Regnard are two Australian brothers who have created a stunning series of underwater nudes. What makes the images even more remarkable is that they shot the series on large format 4x5 Polaroid film.  In 2010  one of their underwater Polaroid nudes won them International Photographer of the year in the "Special Category".  I think it was well deserved.  I especially love the images of the dancing stingrays with nude model - Simply stunning! Limited edition prints are available here.

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard ~ The award winning image.


© Ian Erick Regnard

© Ian Erick Regnard

Stunning Images of the World’s Last Indigenous Cultures ~ By Jimmy Nelson

Jimmy Nelson's work has taken him from war-torn Afghanistan, Pakistan and the former Yugoslavia to the remotest corners of China and Tibet. But in 2009, the British photographer outdid even himself when he embarked upon a four-year trek around the world—cutting through Amazonian jungles, braving freezing temperatures in Siberia and even surviving a case of meningitis in Ethiopia—to photograph some of the world’s last indigenous tribes. [via Ralph Lauren]

Nelson documented 55 cultures and tribes, many of which are at risk of disappearing forever, often in remote parts of the world, using a 50-year-old 4x5 camera. His book, Before They Pass Away,is a collection of the images he made on his epic journey.

Jimmy Nelson

Jimmy Nelson

A Maasai warrior. "To be a Maasai is to be born into one of the world’s last great warrior cultures," Nelson's website reads. The Maasai people, who live in Tanzania and Kenya, are said to have migrated to the region from Sudan in the 15th century. ~Jimmy Nelson

"In 2009, I planned to become a guest of 31 secluded and visually unique tribes. I wanted to witness their time-honoured traditions, join in their rituals and discover how the rest of the world is threatening to change their way of life forever. Most importantly, I wanted to create an ambitious aesthetic photographic document that would stand the test of time. A body of work that would be an irreplaceable ethnographic record of a fast disappearing world." 
~ Jimmy Nelson

Click on images for a larger view*

Kazakh tribespeople. Descendants of Turkic, Mongolic and Indo-Iranian tribes, as well as the Huns, the Kazakhs are a "semi-nomadic people that have roamed the mountains and valleys of western Mongolia with their herds since the 19th century,"  ~Jimmy Nelson

Members of Namibia's Himba tribe. The Himba are "an ancient tribe of tall, slender and statuesque herders," according to Nelson's website. "Since the 16th century they have lived in scattered settlements, leading a life that has remained unchanged, surviving war and droughts...in one of the most extreme environments on earth." ~ Jimmy Nelson

"I love travelling across the globe and was often sent to far-off countries as a photojournalist and for advertising assignments. I always took the opportunity to capture the local culture and people during those trips. For me, Before They Pass Away was essential because although these tribes will always exist, what is happening is that they are abandoning their culture. Affluence is taking over the undeveloped world, and, in my opinion, there should be a balance somewhere in between. I want to show these tribes that they are already rich, that they have something money can’t buy. What I hope to achieve is bringing attention to these people by showing that they are beautiful."~ Jimmy Nelson

Jimmy Nelson

Jimmy Nelson

Samburu tribespeople. The Samburu tribe lives in northern Kenya. Nelson told HuffPost that Samburu men are so powerful and at one with nature that they've been known to use their bare hands to kill lions that attack their camels.~ Jimmy Nelson

 Māori ~Jimmy Nelson

The Huli warriors in Papua New Guinea. According to Nelson, the Huli tribe has shrunk by 90 percent in the last few decades, largely due to a mass migration to towns and cities. ~ Jimmy Nelson

Jimmy Nelson

“What’s interesting about all these people—despite the differences in geography, customs and history—is that they live in balance with the environment and have achieved the perfect harmony that everyone in the West dreams of.” ~ Jimmy Nelson

The Himba ~ Jimmy Nelson

Southwest Ethiopia ~ Jimmy Nelson

Jimmy Nelson

A Nenet tribesman. The Nenets are reindeer herders who live in the Yamal peninsula of northwest Siberia. The Nenets have thrived in Siberia for more than a millennium, living in temperatures that range from minus 50 degrees Celcius in winter to 35 degrees Celcius in summer, per Nelson's website. Every year, the Nenets undertake a migration of over a 1,000 km, a distance that includes a 48 km crossing of the frozen Ob River.

A Mursi tribesman. The nomadic Mursi tribe lives in southwestern Ethiopia.~Jimmy Nelson

Jimmy Nelson using his 50-year-old large format camera ( Linhof?) film camera in Papua New Guinea.

To purchase Jimmy Nelson’s book, Before They Pass Away, see link below: 
Before They Pass Away

  

For more information about Jimmy Nelson and the Before They Pass Away project, please visitwww.beforethey.com.

Photographer Profile ~ Charles Dodgson ( aka Author Lewis Carroll)

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832 -1898) better known as “Lewis Carroll,” author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, took up the then new art-form of photography in 1856. Over 3000 photographs were taken by Dodgson, but only 1000 have survived due to the passage of time and deliberate destruction.

Fifty percent of Dodgson’s surviving work is of young girls, but he also photographed skeletons, dolls, dogs, families, statues and trees. Charles Dodgson quit photography in 1880 because he thought keeping a running studio was too difficult and time-consuming.

“You, I suppose, dream photographs,” 
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson describing Charles Dodgson

 Eliza D. Hobson, taken at Croft Rectory, Yorkshire, circa 1860 Albumen : 15.5 x 12.5 cm by Charles Dodgson

 ( aka Lewis Carroll)

Irene MacDonald, Flo Rankin, and Mary MacDonald at Elm Lodge, 1863 by Charles Dodgson

 ( aka Lewis Carroll)

The Real Alice ( in Wonderland)  Alice Lidell dressed up as beggar-maid.

Carroll took several photos of Alice Liddell, though the best known one is “Portrait of Alice Liddell as the Beggar Child.” Author Francine Prose describes it in her book The Lives of the Muses:

“The child is exceptionally beautiful.  The bright black coins of her eyes, the unblemished pale flesh ever so lightly grazing the rough, mossy stone, the perfect ankles and feet, the slightly prehensile toes curled among the nasturtiums, the ragged costume nearly comical in its carnal suggestiveness, the crisp regularity of her features, the gleam of her hair, the naturalness of her posture, the confidence of that crooked elbow and the hand at her hip, the artistry of this composition, the graceful pose that seems so integral and ideally suited to the photograph–the cupped hand, the beggar child’s supplication, not extended toward us but staying within the picture plane, more ironic, knowing, and withholding than importuning–a pose so apparently effortless that we take its elegance for granted until we compare it with another photo of Alice in the same beggar’s rags, a more frontal and literal-minded shot in which the girl’s hands, joined before her, resemble a baby seal’s flippers.”

 “Finally its the gaze that holds us and makes the photo seem so unlike any other portrait of a child–or an adult.  It’s the subtlety and complexity of Alice’s expression, the paradoxical mixture of the sly and straightforward, the saucy and serious: the intense concentration that Alice brought to Dodgson’s portrayals of her as a child, the boldness that singled her out of family groupings and then disappeared, subsumed by self-conscious melancholy, as Alice passed the age at which the child-friends ceased to interest their attentive adult companion.” (Prose, pp. 66-67)

 Alice Liddell

by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
wet collodion glass plate negative, Spring 1860
5 in. x 6 in.

 Lorina Charlotte (b. 1849) and Alice Pleasance  Liddell (b. 1852) daughters of Rev. Henry George Liddel (as above), taken in Chinese costume in the Deanery Garden at Christ Church in 1859. 

Charles Dodgson's love affair with photography