Olympe Aguado
| Olympe Aguado | |
|---|---|
Olympe Aguado (right, standing), with his brother, Onésipe, c. 1853
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| Born |
3 February 1827 Paris |
| Died | 25 October 1894 (aged 67) Compeigne, France |
| Parent(s) | Alexandre Aguado and Maria de Carmen Vidoire Moreno |
| Relatives | Onésipe Aguado (brother) |
Count Olympe-Clemente-Alexandre-Auguste Aguado de las Marismas (3 February 1827 – 25 October 1894) was a Franco-Spanish photographer and socialite, active primarily in the 1850s and 1860s. One of several early photographers who learned the practice from Gustave Le Gray, Aguado pioneered a number of photographic processes, including carte de visite photographs and photographic enlargement processes. He was also a founding member of the influential French Photographic Society in 1854.
Aguado was born in Paris in 1827, the second son of the Spanish-born Marquis Alexandre Aguado (1784–1842) and Maria de Carmen Vidoire Moreno. Alexandre Aguado had been a supporter of Joseph Bonaparte during the Peninsular War (1808-1814). Following the war, he went into exile in Paris, and rose to become one of the wealthiest bankers in France. In the 1820s and 1830s, he negotiated a series of loans that saved Spain from bankruptcy, and King Ferdinand VII of Spain conferred on him the title of "Marquis de las Marismas del Guadalquivir" (Marquis of the Guadalquivir Marshes). Upon his death, his sons, including Olympe, inherited a considerable fortune.
In the late 1840s, Aguado learned photography from pioneering French photographer Gustave Le Gray. From his studio on the Place Vendôme, he initially worked with daguerreotypes, but by the early 1850s, was already experimenting with other photographic processes, namely with negative paper and collodion on glass. In 1854, he and Edouard Delessert developed the carte-de-visite printing method as a way to add portraits to visiting cards (the process was patented by Eugène Disderi later that year). Later in the decade, he experimented with enlargement processes. Like Le Gray, Aguado taught photography to a number of his friends, among them Camille Silvy.
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