Over the years, photographers have flocked to France’s Côte d’Azur, to enjoy the sea—of course—but also to capture the mystique that made the region popular in the first place. How does one enshrine the baby-blue skies that unfold into the turquoise of the Mediterranean? Or suggest the crisp yet balmy air?
A young Charles Nègre was the first to immortalize the Côte d’Azur. In two sittings—one in 1852 and one in 1863—Nègre used the first publicly available photographic process, the daguerreotype, to document monuments in the cities of Avignon, Antibes, and Nice. Although the resulting book, Midi de la France, wasn’t a commercial success, it did inspire the painter Georges Braque, who used the architectural shots as inspiration for his Cubist landscapes.
