Image and Enterprise

Adolphe Braun (1812-1877) was an entrepreneur who recognized the possibilities of the new process of photography. Trained to provide designs for textile manufacture in the city of Mulhouse in eastern France, he launched a second career in the 1850s as a photographer. Over the following decades, Braun's enterprise was fueled by ambition, business sense, and skillful use of technical developments.

His company became a leader in creating photographs for a wide audience. Braun and his team of photographers produced works for both a popular and a fine-arts market. Their images embody the deepest historical trends of the time in commerce, industry, culture, and politics. They also reveal the way in which an emerging medium offered an international public new ways of understanding their rapidly changing world.