Seeing Tahiti - The First Photographs, 1859–1870

In 2023, the museum acquired an exceptional collection of photographs—the first images taken in French Polynesia between 1859 and 1870. They are the work of two naval officers, Gustave Viaud and Paul Émile Miot, whose complementary approaches offer a rare glimpse into a region that had been very little photographed at the time. Gustave Viaud's paper negatives, produced between 1859 and 1862, constitute a previously unpublished collection, long preserved by the Loti Viaud family and later by a private collector. As Pierre Loti's older brother, Viaud played a major role in fostering the writer's fascination with distant lands, but he was also a quiet pioneer of photography. Stationed in Tahiti as a naval surgeon, he quickly began experimenting with this new medium. His images—ranging from masterfully composed landscapes and familiar topographical scenes to subtle depictions of the wind's effect on vegetation—reveal a true sense of composition. In 1859, he also produced a remarkable portrait of Teriimaevarua II, Queen of Bora Bora. Ten years later, Paul Émile Miot, an officer already recognized as an accomplished photographer, spent time in Tahiti and the Marquesas. Using collodion glass negatives, he captured the coastlines, landscapes, and faces of Polynesian society, notably the royal family. His precise, almost modern eye lends his compositions a unique power. Together, these two series form a striking body of visual material, predating the widespread development of photography in these archipelagos. The exhibition aims to highlight the graphic beauty of the negatives, while also presenting enlargements, positives, and vintage prints. Viaud's images, which have remained almost entirely unpublished, and those by Miot, which have never before been featured in a dedicated exhibition, come together for the first time in a single exhibition.