PHOTO HISTORY
   PETER LINDLEIN
       
  Edouard Baldus and his Secret ... revealed Part 5c
  5. The Secret of Ed(o)uard Baldus - revealed
        

   

EBN

     

And although the winding road from Grünebach to Paris endet in poverty – what a life! More exactly: How many lives! Soldier, counterfeiter, emigrant, painter, husband and father, photographer, printer, publisher – and again and again inventor, especially of himself.
That his photographs are traded at high prices today is a triple ironic note for Eduard, the ‘Guardian of treasure’, the escaping money counterfeiter and photographer dying bankrupt, whose work and real treasures his home region still has to discover. 

Peter Lindlein, 2010 

P.S. It is also some kind of irony, that just that photo - which called my attention for Baldus and his birthplace, and which later let me discover the warrant for apprehension for the counterfeiter Baldus - although was published in an album of Baldus, today is attributed to another photographer. This was just the start of a long list of wrong references leading to the truth – or to that what we consider as such. And as Baldus was not a purist in his photographic work, retouching, adding and combining, I took the liberty to present a collage earlier, to complete finally his self-portrait of 1853 in the year 2010.

 

EB