Tahiti in Focus: Early Photographs 1859–1870

Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, 37, quai Jacques Chirac

Free

Two perspectives, a decade apart: the very first photographs of French Polynesia resurface, signed by an obscure naval surgeon and by a photographer already recognized. A never-before-seen photographic rediscovery at the museum. In 2023, the museum acquired an exceptional set of photographs, the earliest images taken in French Polynesia between 1859 and 1870. They are the work of two naval officers, Gustave Viaud and Paul Émile Miot, whose complementary approaches offer a rare testimony about a territory still little photographed at the time. The paper negatives of…