Film on Monégasque photography pioneer premieres tonight
By Megan Jackson, MonacoViews Editorial
A documentary on Hercule Florence, the Monégasque who coined the word photography, has its preview screening tonight at the Auditorium Rainier III.
The Auditorium Rainier III hosts the Monaco preview of Hercule Florence, autoportrait (1804-1879) this evening at 18.00, opening the Principality's programme marking two hundred years of photography. The documentary, produced by Brazil's Instituto Hercule Florence, traces the life of the Monégasque who emigrated to Brazil in 1823 and became one of the medium's earliest experimenters, coining the term photographie in 1833 independently of his better known European contemporaries.
The screening forms part of a wider 2026-2027 programme exploring the city's links to the history of photography, a story that has drawn renewed attention since the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco staged its major retrospective on Florence in 2017, titled Hercule Florence. Le Nouveau Robinson. That exhibition first brought the inventor's Brazilian archives and early photographic experiments to wider public notice in Monaco.
For residents with an interest in the Principality's cultural history, the film offers a rare chance to see how a figure largely overlooked in the mainstream history of photography is being reclaimed as part of Monaco's own heritage. Further dates in the bicentenary programme are expected to follow through 2027, with details to be released via the government's cultural calendar.