Voir Tahiti. Premières photographies 1859-1870

Exhibition See Tahiti. First Photographs 1859-1870 From September 29, 2026 to January 31, 2027 The museum acquired in 2023 an exceptional collection of photographs that are the very first taken in French Polynesia, between 1859 and 1870, by two naval officers.

The set of photographs taken by Gustave Viaud between 1859 and 1862 is composed of paper negatives sometimes accompanied by their print on salted paper. It was purchased from the Loti-Viaud family in the 1990s.

Preserved since by the same collector, these images have never been exhibited. Gustave Viaud is the elder brother of Julien Viaud, known as Pierre Loti. Gustave Viaud is a key figure in the writer's passion for exoticism.

He is above all an unknown actor in the beginnings of photography. Marine surgeon assigned to Tahiti in June 1859, he quickly procured photographic equipment to practice this new mode of representation.

He uses paper negatives, as Pierre Trémaux in Sudan, Auguste Bartholdi and John Beasley Greene in Egypt or Désiré Charnay in Mexico could do in the same years.

His images, essentially landscapes, show mastered compositions, sometimes playing with the movements of plants in the wind. He also creates an exceptional portrait of Teriimaevarua II, queen of Bora Bora.

Paul-Emile Miot, a sailor recognized from the 1850s as an excellent photographer, practices his talents in different locations around the world. 10 years after Viaud he passes through Tahiti and the Marquesas during two stays in 1869 and 1870.

He creates many portraits and landscapes using collodion glass negatives. His images characterize a marine point of view, showing notably the coasts. But Miot also photographs Polynesian society and notably the royal family.

His images bear the mark of an experienced photographer but also of an eye that can quickly be described as