Edouard-Denis Baldus

Edouard-Denis Baldus (1815, Grunebach, Prussia – 1882, Paris) was a French landscape, architectural, and railway photographer in the mid-1800s.

Baldus was originally trained as a painter and had also worked as a draughtsman and lithographer before switching to photography in 1849. In 1851, he was commissioned for the Mission Héliographique by the Historic Monuments Commission of France to photograph historic buildings, bridges, and monuments. He was extremely well-known throughout France for his efforts in photography. One of his greatest assignments was to document the construction of the Louvre museum.

In 1855, Baron James de Rothschild, President of Chemin de Fer du Nord commissioned Edouard Baldus to do a series of photographs to be used as part of an album to be gifted to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as a souvenir of their visit to France that year.

Baldus used wet and dry paper negatives as large as 10x14 inches in size. From these negatives, he made contact prints. In order to create a larger image, he put contact prints side by side to create a panoramic effect.