See Tahiti. Early Photographs, 1859-1870

On 22 August 1860, Gustave Viaud, a navy surgeon who had arrived in Tahiti at 23, photographed the Papeete seafront between Fare Ute and the military bakery. Pierre Loti's older brother worked with the calotype, a paper negative whose long exposures made portraits hard, so he shot mostly landscapes and wrote home that they "ont vraiment du chic".

The museum bought his negatives and Paul-Émile Miot's in 2023. About 20 Viaud images sit beside nearly 60 by Miot, who came ten years later with collodion glass plates and photographed the royal family. You see more negatives than prints: the curators backlit them so the paper grain, the glass and the marks of their making show. Papeete's barracks, port and governor's residence record the colonial administration going up after the 1842 protectorate.

It fills the Atelier Martine Aublet, a 170 m² mezzanine over the permanent collection, and Sortiraparis called it "a compact slice of French and Tahitian history". The €14 museum ticket (€11 reduced) covers it, and Thursdays run until 22:00.