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This publication accompanies a five-year research project dedicated to the work of the Monegasque-Brazilian inventor, explorer, and artist Hercule Florence, who developed a photographic process as early as 1833 in Brazil. Through scientific contributions and previously unpublished archival documents, this book highlights his extraordinary life and genius.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Monaco's Nouveau Musée National from March 17 to September 24, 2017.
Antoine Hercule Romuald Florence was born in Nice in 1804 to a family originally from the Principality of Monaco. The young Florence emigrated to Brazil in 1823 and, the following year, joined the Langsdorff Expedition—sponsored by Tsar Alexander I to explore the Mato Grosso—as an illustrator. During this mission, fraught with uncertainty and danger, he became aware of his talents as a scientist and inventor. After the Langsdorff expedition, in 1830, he settled with his first wife, Maria Angélica, in the small town of São Carlos (now Campinas), where he worked in coffee production. Until his death in 1879, Hercule Florence wrote scientific texts and kept a journal in which he analyzed and detailed his research on new printing processes, including polygraphy and pulverography, as well as photography, a field in which he is now considered a pioneer. He produced a series of drawings depicting agricultural activities in northern São Paulo, leaving behind a significant iconographic legacy that illustrates the coffee cultivation process, which at the time was linked to slavery and deforestation.
This publication accompanies a five-year research project dedicated to the work of the Monegasque-Brazilian inventor, explorer, and artist Hercule Florence, who developed a photographic process as early as 1833 in Brazil. Through scientific contributions and previously unpublished archival documents, this book highlights his extraordinary life and genius.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Monaco's Nouveau Musée National from March 17 to September 24, 2017.
Antoine Hercule Romuald Florence was born in Nice in 1804 to a family originally from the Principality of Monaco. The young Florence emigrated to Brazil in 1823 and, the following year, joined the Langsdorff Expedition—sponsored by Tsar Alexander I to explore the Mato Grosso—as an illustrator. During this mission, fraught with uncertainty and danger, he became aware of his talents as a scientist and inventor. After the Langsdorff expedition, in 1830, he settled with his first wife, Maria Angélica, in the small town of São Carlos (now Campinas), where he worked in coffee production. Until his death in 1879, Hercule Florence wrote scientific texts and kept a journal in which he analyzed and detailed his research on new printing processes, including polygraphy and pulverography, as well as photography, a field in which he is now considered a pioneer. He produced a series of drawings depicting agricultural activities in northern São Paulo, leaving behind a significant iconographic legacy that illustrates the coffee cultivation process, which at the time was linked to slavery and deforestation.
