File talk:Duhauron1877.jpg

Agen or Angoulême?

About a week ago I came across File:Angouleme 1872.jpg that was clearly identified as being taken in Angoulême and the bottom of the page identifies the location as Angoulême, so I went through the uses of the image and changed those that stated Agen and changed them to Angoulême. The discussions of the image as a featured picture in 2006 did not question the location. A user posted on my en talk page en:User talk:Ww2censor/Archive29#Louis Ducos du Hauron's picture : Agen vs Angoulême ? claiming the location as Agen with some details to verify their statements.

I was able to visit Agen last week and take some photos that verifiy the location as Agen. I uploaded those images to a Flickr album with a copy of this image for comparison. Unfortunately it is impossible to take any photos from the same vantage point due to the tall trees and very heavily overgrown vegetation in the area, but it is obvious from most the foreground buildings, even though the perspective is not exact, this is Agen. A Google Street View while also not exactly the same Agen view, also confirms the location.

While we usually rely on reliable sources but those sources vary in their location statement, even ones one would expect to regard as reliable gave the location as Angoulême, such as this Time-Life book on Color photography or this Beaumont Newhall book on Photography and even the Kodak George Eastman House, where the image resides, in 1954 misidentified the image though that article was also written by Beaumont Newhall, but some sources do state Agen such as this photography book or this BJP, British Journal of Photography journal in 1989.

Since this investigation I have reverted all Angoulême edits and ensured all that state the location are now Agen.

Ww2censor (talk) 22:20, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

BTW, the George Eastman House now identify the correct location as confirmed by an email conversation some time ago. Ww2censor (talk) 16:01, 18 May 2017 (UTC)