Entrée du Robinet 1860 - 1862

This photograph, *Entrée du Robinet*, was created by Edouard Baldus, who captured it using the 19th-century technology of the calotype. Baldus was working at a fascinating moment in history, when photography was both a new art form and a tool of industrialization. Looking at the print, the tonal range is soft and the details are captured with remarkable clarity. This is a direct result of the artist’s mastery of the materials. The process involved coating paper with silver iodide, exposing it in a large format camera, and then developing the latent image. The subject matter – a railway cutting through a monumental landscape – speaks volumes about the social context. Railways, like photography, were emblems of modernity, compressing space and time. Baldus’s image celebrates this new infrastructure, but also quietly acknowledges the labor and engineering required to reshape the natural world. He blurs the line between documentation and artistic expression, offering a glimpse into the making of both an image and a nation.