Gustave Viaud

Gustave Viaud (1836 to 1865) was a French naval surgeon, born in Rochefort in Charente-Maritime, who died off Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka. He was the elder brother of the writer Pierre Loti. He arrived in Tahiti in 1859 and worked at Taravao and the nearby islands, where he also became the first photographer of Tahiti. His camera needed exposures of between five and fifteen minutes, so he could photograph only landscapes, and the 25 photographs of Papeete he left are valued as historical documents. He left Tahiti in 1862 before being appointed to Cochinchina. In 1993 the International Hydrographic Organization named the Viaud Ridge, an underwater mountain range in the Indian Ocean near the place where he died, after him.