Forêt de Fontainebleau

2005

Forêt de Fontainebleau, 2005. Herbert Ascherman (American, b. 1947). Gelatin silver print; image: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Herbert Ascherman, Jr. 2022.121 Photographers such as Gustave Le Gray (see 1988.64), André Giroux (1996.9) and Constant Famin (1988.167) soon followed. Herbert Ascherman paid homage to them in the photographs he made during a dozen excursions in the forest over a five-year period. He used an antique wood box camera similar to the large, heavy cameras his precursors had toted through the forest. The curved black border at the top of this picture echoes effects caused by 19th century photographic technology. In the mid-19th century, a group of French artists spent their summers painting in the forest of Fontainebleau, a former royal hunting preserve 45 miles from Paris.