Louis Auguste Bisson

b. 1814 — d. 1876

Bisson Frères Louis-Auguste Bisson French, 1814 - 1876; and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson French, 1826 - 1900 Bisson Frères -- consisting of brothers Louis-Auguste and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson, also known as the Bissons âiné and jeune (older and younger) -- was one of the most celebrated and widely known French photographic studios and publishing houses of the 19th century. Begun by their father, a heraldic painter, the Bissons' first studio opened in Paris in 1841, shortly after the invention of the daguerreotype. Louis-Auguste, a student of architecture and chemistry, learned photography directly from Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and went on to advance the medium through a number of inventions and techniques, contributions for which the brothers received considerable praise. He retired from the business in 1865. Auguste-Rosalie, perhaps the better known of the two, was responsible for some of their more spectacular photographic successes, including the first closeup views of the peaks of Mt. Blanc (1861). Among the Bissons' many accomplishments and honors were a set of 900 daguerreotypes of the members of the French National Assembly, which were later published in lithographic copies; their appointment as official photographers to Napoléon III and Pope Pius IX; their role as founding members of the Société française de photographie; and their numerous and much-admired series of landscape, architectural, and portrait photographs. After his brother's retirement, Auguste-Rosalie continued to work in photography, including a voyage to Egypt in 1869 and views of the Siege of Paris in 1871. As late as 1900, the year of his death, he patented a heliochrome process for the printing of photographs in color with ink. T.W.F.