About This Image

Signature in ink on photograph at the bottom right, "Auguste Laresche et Th. Monaton, 1855", annotated on the bottom recto of the mount in pencil "Voyage en Sicile n° 33, Temple de Junon Lucine à Girgenti".

Auguste Laresche was born in France about 1826 to Jean Francois Laresche and Jeanne Baptiste Colette (Jeanneret). He had four sisters. He apparently started life as a farmer. Very little is known how he got into photography, although he apparently partnered with another relatively unknown photographer Th. Monaton in Sicily and Palermo, Italy, taking calotype paper negatives, perhaps learning photography from his partner.

Laresche later had a studio at two locations in Lyon, France, where he made photographic portraits, scenic landscapes, art reproductions, etc. from the late 1850s until at least well into the 1860s, if not later. Monaton apparently was his early partner in the studio.

Laresche (and occasionally Monaton, sometimes misspelled Monnaton) is mentioned in J.M. Voignier's Repertoire des Photographes de France au Dix-Neuvieme Siecle (1993), pp. 150 and 185; Aubenas and Roubert, Primitifs de la Photographie: Le Calotype en France, 1843-1860, (Guillimard and the BNdF, 2010), p.287; Durand et.al., De L'Image Fixe a L'Image Animee, Tome 2, L-Z (Archives Nationales 2015), p.635.

Laresche's work was included in the 2023 exhibit, L’Italia è un desiderio. Fotografie, paesaggi e visioni 1842 – 2022. Le collezioni Alinari e Mufoco. He is mentioned in the 1858 Revue photographique: recueil mensuel exclusivement consacré aux progrès de la photographie in conjunction with fellow photographer Stephane Geoffrey.

Lareshe's works, especially his early salt prints, are quite rare.

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