Art Inquiries
Abstract
Research on women who have worked in the field of photography in Spain is recent and has developed mostly in the 21st century. Still in 2025, we don’t have a book that includes them all. Outside Spain, they are completely unknown.
Here we present, as a case of study, a French woman who doesn’t fit into the rules of her time: Marie-Agnèse-Anastasie Clemandot (Le Puy-en-Velay, Haute-Loire, 1807 – Paris, 1876). She was a bookseller in Zurich, a ribbon merchant in Paris, a travelling daguerreotypist in France, Spain and Portugal and seller of leather for surgical instruments. She also had a girls’ school in Madrid, and travelled to Asia.
Mme. Fritz’ trip as a portrait photographer took her from Perpignan (France) throughout the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), working in different cities at the begining of the photographic proffession, from the winter of 1842 until the summer of 1846.
Mme. Fritz saw in itinerant photography a way to make an independent living and a tool of emancipation. She is an example that not all women stayed at home in the 19th century. Some changed countries and undertook solo trips to do business.
One of those businesses was photography, and in an activity that until a few years ago was considered eminently masculine, Mme. Fritz is an example of an early and itinerant daguerreotype portrait professional from the first generation of practitioners who made known and contributed to the development and institutionalization of photography.
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Recommended Citation
GARCÍA FELGUERA, MARIA DE LOS SANTOS, and Gregorio Escalada Sardina. "An Early Female Daguerreotypist in Spain: Marie-Agnès-Anastasie Clemandot, Madame Fritz." 20, 1 (2025). https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/artinquiries_secacart/vol20/iss1/4