Emile Zola

(Paris, France, 1840 - 1902, Paris, France)

French

Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola was a French novelist, journalist and playwright; at the age of 45 he ”put down his pen, picked up a camera and never wrote again.” In the seven years before his death at the age of 62, Zola became obsessed with recording the world around him, snapping some 7,000 pictures of friends, family, Paris sites and himself. Michel Taekens, a curator of an exhibition on Zola’s work, stated “For Zola, photography was another form of writing; he took pictures the way some writers take notes.” He eventually owned 10 different cameras and kept up with the latest inventions. He had his own darkroom, developed his own photos, experimented with different kinds of paper, and refused touch-ups. If he appears in dozens of family portraits, it is because of his own invention of the remote-controlled shutter release.

The Akron Art Museum does not own any work by Zola, but this acquisition would allow curators to tell stories about the history of photography, and the relationship between art-making and writing.

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