Andre Giroux was the son of a camera maker (who provided the equipment for Daguerre, the French inventor of photography). Andre Giroux ws also a painter of distinction. When he made photographs he worked manually on the negatives to create the painterly effects we see in The Ponds at Obtevoz - for example, adding texture to the water at the centre-right and highlights in the grass, rushes and the leaves of the pollarded tree in the foreground. He also added clouds by hand, possible using smoke from a candle. Finally, he printed the work exquisitely, gold-toning it to give a rich purplish colour. He exhibited at the 1855 international exhibition in Paris where his photographs may have been seen by the British connoisseur Chauncy Hare Townshend. Townshend bequeathed this and other photographs to the Museum in 1869.