Notre Dame des Doms, Avignon

Camille Bernabé made these two views, each one a subtle masterpiece of composition, on a photographic tour from Lyon to Marseille in 1852, accompanied by fellow photographer and artist Claude Marie Ferrier (1811 – 89). Bernabé ran an important daguerreotype studio in Lyon and is best known for alpine views and some of the first images of glaciers, which he made at the behest of the Alsatian industrialist Daniel Dolfus-Ausset. Bernabé’s calotype views, such as these two pictures from Avignon and Nîmes, are rare and less well known. A tower is the focal point of each view: front and center with the bell tower of Notre Dame des Doms (missing its famous gilded statue of the Virgin Mary, erected in 1859); and the more discreet Augustan-era Tour Magne, which rises above the lane of cypresses that connect it to the calm oasis of the Jardin de la Fontaine depicted in the foreground.