ABSTRACT
Gisele Freund's varied photographic career embraced reportage for Life magazine as well as portraits of literary figures such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She remains, however, most referred to as a nineteenth-century specialist. On 15 June 1839, a group from the Chamber of Deputies proposed that the French government purchase the rights to the new invention of photography for public use. Nineteenth-century revolutions in France were products of social changes that accompanied the growth of capitalism. Massive economic changes took place during this period. The 1830 strike among Parisian printers, precipitated by job cutbacks due to the installation of improved machines, was only one indication of the dramatic changes in French economic and social life. Born in 1765 at Chalon-sur-Saone, Joseph Nicephore Niepce was the son of an influential lawyer whose connections extended to many of the most important families in Burgundy. In 1826, after many failures, Niepce finally succeeded in developing a very primitive photographic process.
