Photography & Society

BY GISELE F R E U N D
Photography
&
Society
"

BY GISELE FREUND

,Jo13oo<{ :)7

David R. Godine, Publisher

Boston
First published in English in 1980 by
David R. Godine. Publisher, Inc.
}06 Dartmouth Street
Boston. Massachusetts 02116

English translation copyright 1980 by

David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.

All rights reserved. No pan of this book may be used or reproduced

in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and n.-views.

This book was first published in France in 1974 under the ride
Photograpbie et Societe by Editions du Seuil. Original edition
copyright 1974 by GiseIe Freund. Godine wishes to acknowledge
the collaboration of Richard Dunn, Yong-Hee Last. Megan Marshall,
and Andrea Perera in the English translation of the book.

Frontispiece: Jean Lanes, L'Oeil Perfilnt de Cartier-Bresson.

library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Freund, Gisele
Photography & society.
Translation of Photographie et societe.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Photography-Social aspects.
2. Photography -History. I. Tide.
TR147.F6513 770 78-58502

ISBN 0-87923-250-1

PHOTOGRAPHY & SOCIETY has been set in VIP Sabon by

G & S Typeseners, Austin, Texas. The book was printed and bound
by The Alpine Press, South Braintree, Massachusetts. The paper is a
special making of acid-free Mohawk Vellum. The manuscript was
prepared for the press by Quinn Moss, with design and typography
by Howard I. Grana.
 Contents

PART ONE

} The Relationship Between Art and Society

9 Precursors of the Photographic Portrait

19 Photography During the July Monarchy (I 83 a-I848)

35 The First Portrait Photographers

52 Photography During the Second Empire (I8F-I870)

69 Attitudes Toward Photography

83 The Expansion and Artistic Decline of the

Photographic Profession

95 Photography as a Means of Art Reproduction

PART TWO

103 Press Photography

I I5 The Birth of Photojournalism in Germany

141 American Mass Media Magazines

161 Photography as a Political Tool

175 Photography and the Law

181 The Scandal-Mongering Press

193 Photography As Art

201 Amateur Photography

215 Conclusion

219 Not

227 Acknowledgments

229 Index
Preface

Photography is a concrete example of how artistic ex

pression and social forms continually influence and re
shape each other. Photography and Society is concerned
with this interaction. It covers the history of photogra
phy from the announcement of irs invention in 1839 to
the present as reflected in individual photographic por
traits and later in the portrait of sociery as a whole of
fd by the press.
I..The uses of photography today are so varied that I

could consider only a few of irs applications. For exam
ple, I have not dealt with the role f hotography in
the womens press, or in advertisin. Ith rare excep
tions, however, all photographs publis ed in newspapers
and in magazines perform an advertising function, even if
this is not immediately evident Photography and
SocietyI have attempted to define this function through
concrete examples, many taken from my own experi
ences as a photographer.
The book's first section, which deals with nineteenth
century photographic history, was originally my doctoral
thesis at the Sorbonne. When published forty years ago,
it was the first thesis ever presented on the subject; no
books at the time dealt with photography as a social
force. The thesis has been condensed and revised to in
clude new material that has come to light.
In conclusion, it is my hope that by examining certain
aspects of the history of photography, I have illuminated
the history of contemporary society as well.
-GiseIe Freund
PHOTOGRAPHY & SOCIETY
 The Relutionship BetlNeIl Art clI1d Societ),

W'erner BiLhof. Hunger. Each moment in history has its own form of artistic ex
pression, one that reflects the political dimate, the intel
lectual concerns, and the taste of the period. Taste is not
an inexplicable whim. It is the product of well-defined
conditions that characterize the social structure at each
stage of its evolution. Thus the portraits commissioned
by the bourgeoisie who prospered under Louis XVI strive
for princely character. The taste of that period was de
termined by the class then in powe.r-the nobility.
As the bourgeoisie rose in power, becoming an impor
tant force in the French economy, prevailing tastes were
transformed. The ideal model for portraiture was no
longer princely, but bourgeois in appearance. Lace
trimmed costumes and wigs gave way to the frock coat
and top hat, the cane replaced the sword. The elegance
of a court that had found its highest expression in the
light, vigorous painting and pastels of La Tour and \'(.'at
teau gave \\'ay to the solemn grays of David. Similarly.
the meticulous drav,:ings of Ingres responded to the real
ist tendencies of his time and to the conservative taste
of a bourgeoisie fond of formality and conscious of its
responsibility. Each society thus develops characteristic
forms of artistic expression that are born of the needs
and traditions of the dominant social class.
A change in social structure intluences not only the
subject matter but also the techniques artists use in their
\\'ork. Throughout the nineteenth century-the age of the
machine and modern capitalism-changes occurred both

3
in the character of the faces in portraits and in the artistic
techniques of portraiture. Technological progress out
side the art world led to the invention of a series of proc
esses that were to have considerable bearing on future
developments in art. Lithography, invented in 1798 by
Alois Senefelder and introduced to France a few years
later by Philippe de Lasteyrie (who set up a studio in
Paris), represented an important step in the democratiza
tion of art. But the most decisive factor in making art
accessible to everyone was the invention of photography.
"'!,hotggxaphy-PiaYs an essenti.' role in gmremporary
life. There is scarcely an aspect of human activity in
which it is not used in one form or another. It has be
come indispensable to both science and industry. It pro
vides the basis for mass media-movies, television, video.
Thousarids of newspapers and magazines print millions
of photographs daily.
Photography is now so much a part of our daily lives
that our familiarity causes us to overlook it. One of its
singular characteristics is its acceptance in every social
class. Photographs are as likely to be found in the homes
of laborers and craftsmen as in those of government offi
cials and industrialists., Photography's enormous politi
cal siguificance lies in its universal appeal. It is the per
fect means of expression for a goal-oriented, mechanized,
and bureaucratic society founded on the belief that each
person has his own place in a standardized hierarchy
of professions ..
The camera1las become an instrument of major siguifi
cance to our society. Its inherent ability to transcribe
external reality gives it documentaty validity-it is, seem
ingly, both accurate and unbiased. More than any other
medium, photography is able to express the values of the
dominant social class and to interpret events from that
class's point of view, for photography, although strictly
linked with nature, has only an illusory objectivitY: The
lens, the so-called impartial eye, actUally permits- evety

4 Photography & Society

possible distortion of reality: tbe character of tbe image
is determined by tbe photographer's point of view and
tbe demands of his patrons. The importance of photogra
phy does not rest primariiy in its potential as an art
form, but ratber in its ability to shape our ideas, to in
fluence our behavior, and to define our society.
. In our technological age, when industty is always tty
ing to create new needs, the photographic industty has
expanded enormously because tbe photograph meets
modem man's pressing need to express his own individu
ality. Despite an ever higher standard of living, man in
Western civilization feels less and less involved witb events
around him and is forced into an increasingly passive
role. For him, tbe photograph is an externalization of his
feelings-a kind of creation. No wonder, tben, tbat tbe
number of amateur photographers grows evety day and
shows no sign of lerting up. In its special way, tbe photo
graphic image has transformed our vision of the world.

The Relationship Between Art and Society 5

 PAR T ONE

 " '\!
", .
l. -

8 Photography & Society


The physionotrace. in
vented by Gilles-Louis
Chretien in 1786. combined
two methods of portraiture:
the silhouette and the en
graving. The physionotIace
could be made inexpen-
. siveiy but achieved much the
same effect as a painted por
trait.
Precursors of the Photographic Portrait
The development of the photographic portrait corres
ponds to an important phase in the social development
of Western Europe: the rise of the middle classes when
for the first time, fairly large segments of the population
attained political and economic power. To meet their re
sulting demand for goods, nearly everything had to be
produced in greater quantities. The portrait was no ex
ception: By having one's portrait done an individual of
the ascending classes could visually affirm his new social
status both to himself and to the world at large. To meet
the increased demand for portraits, the art became more
and more mechanized. The photographic portrait was
the final stage in this trend toward mechanization.
Around 1750 the nascent middle classes began push
ing into areas that were formerly the sole domain of the
aristocracy. For centuries the privilege of aristocratic cir
cles, the portrait began to yield to democratization. Even
before the French Revolution the bourgeoisie had already
manifested its profound need for self-glorification, a need
which provoked the development of new forms and tech
niques of portraiture. Photography, which entered the
public domain in 1839, owes much of its popularity and
rapid social development to the continuing vogue of the
portrait.
During this period of transition, however, when con
stant political upheaval and new production methods in
all industries were dissolving the remains of the feudal
system in France, the rising classes had not found a char-
9
acteristic means of artistic expression because they had
not yet formed a clear self-image. The bourgeoisie still
modeled itself after the aristocracy, which continued to
set standards of taste even though it was no longer the
dominant economic or political force. The rising classes
adopted the artistic conventions favored by the nobility,
modifying them according to their own needs.
The nobility were difficult clients. They demanded
technical perfection. To suit the tastes of the day, the
painter tried to avoid all bold colors in favor of more
delicate ones. Canvas alone could not satisfy the aristoc
racy: painters experimented with any material which
might better render the rich textures of velvet or silk. The
miniature portrait became a favorite of the nobility. It
underlined the aristocracy's delight in personal charm.
On powder boxes and pendants one could always carty
about these tiny portraits of friends, lovers, or faraway
members of the family.
The miniature was also one of the first portrait forms
to be coveted by the bourgeoisie for the expression of
its new cult of individualism. In dealing with this new
clientele, the portrait painter faced a double task: he must
imitate the style of the court painters, and bring down
his prices. 'Portrait painting in France at the time of Louis
XV and Louis XVI is characterized by a tendency to fal
sify, to idealize each face, even that of the shopkeeper,
in order to have him resemble the exemplary human type:
the prince.' 1 Easily adapted to its new clientele, the min
iature became one of the most successful minor arts.
A miniaturist could support himself by turning out thirty
to fifry portraits a year and selling them at moderate
prices. But even though it was popular among the middle
classes for a time, it still retained its aristocratic elements,
and eventually, as the middle classes became more secure,
it died out.
By 1850, when the bourgeoisie had become firmly es
tablished, the miuiature portrait had all but disappeated

10 Photography & Society ,

and photography deprived the last of the miniaturists of
their livelihood. In Marseille, for example, there were no
more than four or five miniaturists by 1850, only two
of whom enjoyed enough of a reputation to be turning
out fifty portraits a year. These artists earned just enough
to suppnrt themselves and their families. Within a few
years, there were nearly fifty photographers in town,
most of whom devoted themselves to pnrtrait photogra
phy and earned a good deal more than the best-known
miniaturists. The photographers turned out an average
of twelve hundred pictures annually. Sold at 15 gold
francs apiece, these brought a yearly total of 18,000
francs and a combined income of nearly one million.
Equally dramatic changes took place in all the large cities
in France and abroad.2 For one-tenth the price of a
painted portrait, the photographer could furnish a like
ness which satisfied the taste of the bourgeois as well as
the needs of his pocketbook.
Art forms in their origin and evolution parallel con
tempnrary developments in the social structure. The ar
tistic efforts of the era with which we are concerned
reflect the democratic ideals of the French Revolution
of 1789, which demanded 'the rights of man and of the
citizen.' The revolutionary citizen who helped take the
Bastille and who defended the rights of his class at the
National Assembly reflected the same ideals in posing for
the physionotracists of Paris.
The physionotrace, which represented a major step in
the mechanization of the pnrtrait, had an interesting
predecessor. During the reign of Louis XIV a new process
had been invented for making pnrtraits. By curting pro
files from black, shiny paper, the portraitist could finish
his work in no time. Many skilled craftsmen took up this
new method and worked as itinerant artists at festive
gatherings, from court balls to local fairs. The cut pnr
trait, named silhouette after the finance minister of that
time, achieved international pnpularity.

Precursors of the Photographic Portrait II

 Monsieur de Silhouette was not, as has been claimed, Silhouettes posed the first
the creator of the cutouts that put his name into com threat to traditional portrai
ture because they required
mon usage. The actual inventor is unknown. The word much less rime, talent, and
silhouette, which includes by extension all figures seen expense. These first 'mech
anized' pomaits paved the
in shadowed profile, appeared in the middle of the eight
way for the physionotrace.
eenth century. Its etymology is quite unusual. Named
Controller General in 1750 when France was heading to
ward bankruptcy, M. de Silhouette levied, with some dif
ficulry, cettain public taxes to boost government reve
Dues. For a time he was considered the savior of the
French State, but the deficit was too great and he was
forced to delay certain payments while suspending others
entirely. His populariry plummeted, and the public be-

12. Photography & Society

came spiteful. A new style of clothing appeared: narrow
coats without pleats and breeches without pockets. With
out money to store in them, what good were pockets?
These clothes were said to be styled ii fa Silhoueue,
and to this day, anything as insubstantial as a shadow
is called a silhouette; in a short time, the brilliant Con
troller General had become no more than a shadow of
himself.3
The silhouette cutter remained fashionable until the
time of Bonaparte. Hawkers selling silhouettes could be
found at public balls of the Directoty and Consulate.
Artists improving on the new portrait technique embel
lished the cut shapes by retouching and engraving them
with needles. An abstract form of representation, the
silhouette portrait required no special training from the
cutter. For a time, the public flocked to silhouette cut
ters, pleased with their fast service and modest prices.
The invention of the silhouette did not lead to a large
scale industty, but it did encourage the development of
another new technique popular in France between 1786
and 1830-the physionotrace.
The inventor of the new technique was Gilles-Louis
Chretien. Born in 1754, the son of a court musician at
Versailles, Chretien began in his father's profession but,
hoping to make a better living, he soon chose to become
an engraver. His choice may have been a disappointment
at first, for the competition was fierce, and the work de
manded much time and care. The few portraits which he
produced at the start took too long to bring substantial
remuneration, and commissions did not come frequently
enough to cover expenses. Soon Chretien began experi
menting with faster ways to turn out portraits. In 1786
he successfully devised an apparatus which mechanized
the technique of engraving and saved considerable time.
The invention combined two methods of portraiture, the
silhouette and the engraving, thus creating a new art.
He named his device the physionotrace.

Precursors of the Photographic Portrait 13

 The physionotrace was based on the well-known prin Physionotrace portraits by
Gilles-Louis Chretien and
ciple of the pantograph, an instrument which mechani
Quenedey, two of the best
cally reproduces a drawing or diagram. The pantograph known physionotracists.
is made of rods in the shape of twojoined parallelograms. The portraits tended to re
duce every face to a stylized,
The device moves in a horizontal plane, one parallelo
static expression, a small
gram passing over a design, the other over a blank paper compromise for such an in
ready to receive the design. With a dry srylus attached expensive and oftentimes
flattering product (clock
to the comer of the first parallelogram, the operator fol
wise from top: Chretien,
lows the contours of the design. An inked srylus, attached J.p. Brisson, 1792; Quene
to the second, automatically reproduces the design on the dey, Young Woman, 1814;
Chretien, A.J.A. RuiLhiere;
blank page at a scale determined by the distance between
Quenedey, Young Man).
each stylus. The physionotrace was much larger than the
pantograph and differed in two other respects: the de
vice was held upright so that the features of a seated
model could be traced, and it was fitted with an eye
piece in place of the dry stylus which could pick out the
outlines of an object in space. After posing his model,
the physionotracist, seated on a stepladder behind the
apparatus, maneuvered it by aiming his eye at the fea
tures to be reproduced. The distance from the model to
the device, as well as the position of the stylus, deter
mined the relative scale of the final image.4
The artistic ability and the personality of the painter
played a great role in the miniature portrait. But these
qualities were drastically reduced in the silhouette cut
ter; his was merely a manual skill. At the most his talent
can be seen in attful retouching of the features of a pro
file. The physionotracist did not even need that much
skill. He had only to draw the contours of the figure
which were then transferred and engraved on a metal
plaque. Since a single session with the model was suffi
cient, these portraits were moderately priced. Many phys
ionotracists sold them in series at even lower rates.
In '788, Chretien came to Paris, hoping to benefit
from his invention. He took on a miniaturist named
Quenedey as a partner who, seeing the success of the new
venture, soon left to start a rival establishment. Other

'4 Photography & Society

engravers and miniaturists adopted the new technique
because their own professions, closed out by the physi
onotracists, no longer provided a means of support. Que
nedey, Gonord, and Chretien were the best known of all.
The first two established themselves in the galleries of the
Palais-R oyal, at that time the center of fashionable Patis.
Chretien opened his studio on the rue Saint-Honore.
All the celebrities of the capital soon found their way
to the physionotracists. The important personalities of
theR evolution, of the Empire, of theR estoration, as well
as a great number of unknowns posed in front of the
physionotrace, which copied their profiles with mathe
matical exactitude. Among Chretien's productions one
finds the heads of Bailly, Marat, Petion-all with the tri
color sash-R obespierre, and many others. Quenedey
traced the profiles of Madame de Stad, Louis XVIII,
Saint-Just, Elisa Bonaparte, and numerous other
notables.'
The physionotracists were good businessmen. Soon
they were offering small portraits on wood, ivory, or
medallions to be sold at three gold francs apiece. The
customer had to buy at least two portraits and make a
deposit of half the payment in advance.6 For six gold
francs they sold what they called silhouettes a fang/aise
to which they added hairstyling and costume. The pose
for these lasted only a minute. Gonord also made cameos
and miniature portraits from silhouettes; his 'colored
silhouettes,' as he called them, sold for twelve gold francs
and required a pose of only three minutes.7
Physionotrace portraits had an increasingly detrimen
tal effect on miniature painting and engraving. At the
Salon of I793, one hundred physionotrace portraits were
exhibited. Just three years later, there were twelve rooms
showing fifty physionotrace portraits each.
The physionotracists, especially the three best known,
Quenedey, Gonord, and Chretien, maintained a bitter
rivalty. Each accused the others of having stolen his most

16 Photography & Society

The physionotrace also
pennirted a new kind of
self-portraiture. Chretien
produced these self-portrait
engravings with his phys
ionotrace from a portrait
drawn by Fouquet (1792.).
recent improvements, and they publicized their disputes
in the Paris newspapers" Hoping to win the favor of
the public, each claimed to be the sole inventor of the
various technical processes. Realizing that there were
many interested amateurs, Gonord began to manufacture
sets of equipment as well. All the physionotracists made
a good deal of money from the invention. Eager to have
their portraits made, but unwilling to spend much time
or money, most people preferred to go to the physiono
tracist who, after only a short sitting, could produce a
portrait that was very similar to a painted miniature for
a low price. Soon, the physionotrace portrait replaced the
miniature.
The same tendencies were evident throughout the
French business world. The type and quality of merchan
dise on hand varied with the number of buyers; mer
chandise of poorer quality at a lower price replaced
more expensive merchandise of superior quality. Lux
uty, bought cheaply, became the best guarantee of good
business.
So far we have dealt with the social and technical side
Precursors of the Photographic Portrait 17
of the evolution from miniature to physionotrace. But
consider the difference between the delicate art of the
miniature, where the artist spends days and weeks care
fully reproducing a face, and this virtually mechanized
process of reproduction. The portraits obtained with the
physionotrace now are only of documentary value: they
generally show the same flat, stylized, frozen expression.
In the works of the miniaturist, one can always see more
than a simple likeness between model and copy. The art
ist is free to emphasize whatever characteristics he choos
es, and thereby can evoke the spirit of the sitter as well.
The physionotracist can reproduce facial contours with
mathematical precision, but the resulting portrait lacks
expression because it has not been executed with an art
tist's intuitive feeling for character.
The physionotrace can be considered the symbol of a
period of transition between the old regime and the new.
It is the predecessor of the camera in the technical evo
lution that has led to the coin-operated portrait machines
and Polaroids of today. There will always be a sector in
the art world which is more concerned with speed and
quantity than with art; the physionotracist of 1790 is
not far removed from the passport photograpber of the
twentieth century.
Thanks to the physionotrace, a large portion of the
French bourgeoisie gained access to portraits. But the
process did not necessarily capture the interest of the
majority of the middle class, much less the lower class.
It does not, for example, seem to have beeri practiced
in the provinces. Individual labor was still dominant
there in the execution of a portrait. It was not until a
totally impersonal teclmique came into use with the ad
vent of photography that the portrait could be complete
ly democratized.
Although the physionotrace had nothing to do with the
teclmical development of photography, it can be argued
that it was its ideological predecessor.

18 Photography & Society

Photography During the July Monarchy
(I830-I848)

On IS June 1839, a group from the Chamber of Deputies

proposed that the French government purchase the rights
to the new invention of photography'O for public use.
For the first time, photography made its appearance in
public life. A knowledge of the political parties and social
groups espousing the cause of photography gives yet an
other view of the relationship between the changes in
society and the development of photography.
Nineteenth-century revolutions in France were prod
ucts of social changes that accompanied the growth of
capitalism. The liberal revolution of 1830, which de
throned the oldest branch of the 'legitimate' dynasty and
destroyed all hopes of its restoration, supported the rising
bourgeoisie and its claim to 'natural' power.
Massive economic changes took place during this peri
od. The 1830 strike among Parisian printers, precipitated
by job cutbacks due to the installation of improved ma
chines, was only one indication of the dramatic changes
in French economic and social life. 11 Mechanization took
hold throughout France duting louis-Philippe'S reign:
the number of mechanical spinning wheels, for example,
grew from 466,000 in 182.8 to 819,000 in 1851; there
were only 2.50 power looms in 182.5, but little over twen
ty years later some 12.,12.8 had been installed in France.'2
Individual crafrsmen were being replaced by machines;
France's small, labor-intensive factoties were becoming
machine-dominated industries; and French society itself
was becoming increasingly standardized.

19
 Many French artisans were forced to join the ranks
of the proletariat which, in the early days of industriali
zation, meant a life of misery and complete political in
significance. The petite bourgeoisie, or lower middle
classes, also became more numerous, but with the expan
sion of industry and commerce they prospered along with
the rest of the bourgeoisie, whose members were fast be
coming the pillars of the social order.
On 2.8 July 1831, a bourgeois Parisian proudly ex
hibited his portrait next to one of Louis-Philippe with
the following insctiption: 'There is no real difference be
tween Philippe and me: he is a citizen- king and I am a
kingly citizen.' This anecdote points up the new self
awareness of the bourgeoisie whose ideas and feelings
had become profoundly democratic."
Grocers, haberdashers, clockmakers, hatters, drug
gists-men 'enclosed in the little world of their shops,'
with little means and just enough education to keep their
account books-these were the members of the bourgeoi
sie who were to find in photography a means of self
expression conforming to their new ideals and econontic
status. Their place in society would detennine the nature
and direction of photography. This group established,
for the first time, the economic base that allowed the art
of the portrait to become accessible to the masses.
Just as fashion is set by society's higher classes before
reaching the lower, so photography was first adopted by
those members of the French ruling class who wielded
the most power: industrialists, factory owners, bankers,
politicians, writers, scientists, and all those who belonged
to the intellectual elite ofPatis. Then photography gradu
ally filtered down through the lower ntiddle classes as
they became more influential.
Around 1840 France's toral population was 35 ntillion
but only 300,000 had the right to vote.' The govern
ment, a constitutional monarchy known as the July Mon
archy, was led by Louis-Philippe, a king who liked to

2.0 Pborography & Society

dress in the clothes of the bourgeoisie and carry an um
brella. Members of the two Chambers were chosen by
a small number of electors and were primarily industrial
ists and merchants.
Besides the government party, there were also mem
bers of the Legitimist and Republican oppositions in the
Chambers. The Legitimist party, representing the nobles'
and landowners' interests, no longer exerted the over
whelming power it once had. The Republicans, however,
were an important influence in the political life of the
day, particularly in the press. Their Paris newspaper Le
National, was as respected as the venerable Journal des
debats, the organ of the party in power. The Republican
members of the Chamber came from the bourgeois in
tellectual elite: writers, lawyers, army officers, civil ser
vants, and others. They were, above all, patriots who
despised the Treaty of Vienna of 1 8 1 5 , which was de
signed to keep France weak in the European balance of
power, and who looked back fondly at the old Republic
founded by the French Revolution. I.
Intellectuals have always had both a role to perform
in history and a special function in their own society.
Separated by knowledge and culture, they can under
stand their relative historical position and choose their
own course in life accordingly. They can have a more
open view of the world, a vision not available to other
groups of society restricted by political and economic
status.16 In the French parliament under the July Mon
archy, intellectuals mose to represent the more humani
tarian and liberal causes of the bourgeoisie. Although
they did not constitute an entity strictly distinct from the
bourgeoisie, they were the most forward-thinking repre
sentatives of the constitutional government. Their answer
to the weak contemporary political regime 'whim, sens
ing its own weakness, had to hide behind the crown;
was bourgeois republicanism. Because they were part of
the opposition, this group of intellectuals was Dot con-

PbotogriJfJ/ry During the July Monarchy 21

fined by the conservative politics of the juste milieu (the The world's first photo
graph, Joseph Nicephore
neoclassical conception of the Golden Mean, the happy
Niqx:e used modified
middle ground). They were open to new possibilities." lithographic techniques in
The liberal spirit is defined by an abiding faith in the his first successful recording
of nature in 1826 in this
potential of human intellectual and moral progress. Along
photoengraving of his
with this faith in progress goes an effort to recognize the courtyard in Chalon-sur
realities of the period in which one lives. Because of its Saone: from left to right are
flexible political position, the intellectUal bourgeoisie,
the Niepce house. a pear
tree, the bam (slanted roof),
which attracted the artistic elite during the Revolution and another wing of the
of 1848, could afford to be receptive to contemporary house. The image is faint
because the metal plate
reforms and scientific or spirirual innovations. It also be
etched with the image was
came the most competent judge of the potential of new very shiny and the picture
business venrures. It is not at all surprising, then, that underexposed.

22 Photography & Society


Franois Arago, one of the
first public patrons of pho
tography, suggested to the
French Chamber of Depu
ties that the government buy
Niepce's invention.
these intellectuals were the first to propose that the State
acquire the rights to the new invention of photography
and introduce the invention to the public.
The Republican party had a left-wing democratic fac
tion18 whose leader, Franois Arago, was an extraordi
nary scientist as well as politician. 'This scientist whom
all of Europe admires is at the same time one of the most
vigorous defenders of public freedom and the interests
of the people,' wrote one journalist of the day. 'Since
he has arrived in the Chamber of Deputies, he has op
posed all the ministries and has fought against all reac
tionary and violent measures.' 19 Arago was one of the
intellectuals most imbued with his party's pladorm of
encouraging anything that might lead to progress. Not
surprisingly, he was the first to understand the extraor
dinary role photography could play in the arts, the sci
ences, and other fields. It was Arago who most forcefully
urged the Chamber to purchase this new process for the
State. It is important to note that Arago's interest in
photography was primarily scientific-the predominant
position in the early days of photography.
All inventions are the result of experimentation and
discovery on the one hand, and society's needs on the
other. To these two factors, we should also add the in
ventor's genius and often just plain luck. All of these
factors contributed to Joseph Nicephore Niepce's inven
tion of 1824.2.
Born in 1765 at ChaJon-sur-Saone, Niepce was the son
of an influential lawyer whose connections extended to
many of the most important families in Burgundy. His
financial and social position, the cultural tradition in his
bourgeois intellectual family, and his education all pro
vided him with the time and background to pursue his
scientific interests. He was not unlike many other 'gentle
men-scientists' who carried on their research in the cha
teaux and country homes of the leisured bourgeoisie,
among whom scientific experimentation was frequently
Photography During the July Monarchy l. 3
encouraged In Arago's time no science was more fash
ionable than cbemistry. A popular pastime, half experi
ment, half parlor game, involved attacbing objects like
flowers and leaves to pieces of paper treated with silver
salts. When the paper was exposed to sunlight, the out
line of the objects soon appeared in sharply contrasting
black and white. However, these images disappeared
rapidly because fixing techniques had not as yet been
discovered.
During this post-Revolutionary era, the most firmly
entrencbed traditions began to falter, and life itself seemed
like an experiment. The nobles and those of royalist ten Engraving of Niepce (1765-
dencies, who had largely been excluded from political 1833), inventor of the first
life and who, like Niepce, preferred to retire to their photographic process.
Though his invention even
country estates, now found plenty of time to devote to mally received recognition
their scientific experiments. Photography was already be and government support.
ginning to emerge from their work. In 1814, lithography Niepce died impoverished.

reacbed France and suggested to Niepce the last steps of

his own work. living in the isolation of his country
home, Niepce was unable to find the limestone necessary
for his experiments with lithography. He began to use a
metal plate instead of stone and sunlight in place of the
lithographer's crayon.2 t
In 182.6, afrer many failures, Niepce finaUy succeeded
in developing a very primitive photographic process.22
Not until several years later, however, did the painter
Daguerre perfect Niepce's tecbnique. Daguerre's inven
tion of the diorama had drawn him into studies on the
effects of light, and with his results he was able to make
the new process available to everyone.'] Although Niepce
had spent a lifetime of money and energy on his photo
graphic projects, he received no public recognition and
died impoverished on 5 July 1833.24 Daguerre, an ac
quaintance of Niepce, drew up an agreement with
Niepce's son, Isidore, who received the invention as his
only inheritance. Together, these two would exploit the
discovery."
 Like Niepce, who had spent years looking in vain for
financial backers, Daguerre was at first unsuccessful at
finding the necessary support. Even an effort to go public
ended in failure, as there was no way of convincing specu
lators to risk money on an invention that still did not
inspire much confidence. The first photographic prints
were difficult to appreciate because the image was affixed
to a mirrored surface, which had to be held up against
the light to be seen. And, in any case, lack of initiative
among contemporary businessmen was typical of the
period. Vast industrial expansion did not begin until the
second half of the century. The businessman of the 1830S
invested only in sure ventures and had little experience
in speculation. The stock market was not yet the barom
eter of wealth into which it later evolved.
But, as the former promoter of the diorama and an
ambitious and clever entrepreneur as well, Daguerre
knew how to sell a discovery successfully. He asked that
his name be featured in any publicity given to the inven
tion. And he soon succeeded in making the invention
a favorite subject of conversation at exhibitions and gath
erings of high society.26 Nor was it an accident that sci
entists became interested in photography during the
1830S, a period of great scientific progress. Fifteen years
after its invention photography was at last introduced to
the general public.
'Everything that leads to the progress of civilization,
to the physical and moral well-being of man, ought to
be the continuing goal of enlightened government. This
government must rise to meet the fates of the citizens
that are entrusted to it; those men who work toward
this noble end should be honorably rewarded for their
achievements.' 27 These words of Gay-Lussac, the French
physicist, were typical of the liberal's attachment to the
idea of progress. He delivered them in the Chamber of
Peers six weeks after Arago had presented his proposal
on the invention of photography to the Chamber of Dep-

Photography During the July Monarchy 2 5

uties. Passed unanimously by both Chambers, the law of
fered Daguerre, now considered the inventor of the 'Da
guerreotype,' and Niepce's son Isidore, annuities of
6,000 and 4,000 gold francs respectively.28 As was often
the case at the time, the French government renounced its
rights to a monopoly and left the invention open to the
public. This gesture actually meant little: since the proc
ess was so simple, it would have been difficult to protect
by any patent.
On 19August 1839, having acquired the invention, the
French government made the process public during a
meeting of the Academy of Sciences29 The intellectual
elite of Paris, composed of scholars and the most impor
tant artists of the day, filled the hall. 'As early as eleven
in the morning the crowd was considerable. By three
o'clock an actual riot blocked the doors of the Academy.
All the notables of Paris were crowded into the section re
served for the public: The presence of numerous foreign
scholars at the lecture indicated the tremendous interest
the invention had created in a short period of time and
well beyond French borders.30 Arago himself presented
the details of the technique and outlined the extraordi
nary role photography was going to play in the develop
ment of the sciences to the attentive audience. 'How
archeology is going to benefit from this new process!
It would require twenty years and legions of draftsmen
to copy the millions and millions of hieroglyphics cover
ing just the outside of the great monuments of Thebes,
Memphis, Karnak, etc. A single man can accomplish this
same enormous task with the daguerreotype.' 31 The art
ist would discover in the new technique a valuable tool,
and art itself would be democratized by the daguerreo
typen Arago read a letter of approval from the painter
Delaroche. Astronomy would also benefit from this ne\\!
invention: 'We can hope to make photographic maps
of our satellite. In a few moments time one can achieve
one of the longest and most difficult projects in astrono-

26 Photography 6 Society
 l n\t';lIt11ftrOlY,"OIl"I[

Following Niepce's discm' my: 33 The numerous possibilities Arago presented in his
ery of and Dagllere s Im
. speech summed up the immense importance ofthe inven
provements on pnmltlve
photographic techniques, a tion. Arago's foresight was evident in his prophetic final
Daguerreotype craze spread remarks: '\Vhen experimenters use a new tool in the
throughout Europe and
study of nature, their initial expectations always fall
America (lithograph by
T.H. Mallrisset, The D.:J short of the series of discoveries that eventually issue
guerreotYPo11l.:Jnia.1840). from it. WIth this invention, one must particularly em
phasize the unforeseen possibilities.' 34
Arago's presentation was an important Parisian event,
reviewed with lively interest by all the newspapers. Dur
ing the weeks that followed, Paris was taken by a mad
spirit of experimentation. With equipment and acces
sories weighing as much as 220 pounds, Parisians set
out to search for subject matter. Dusk was greeted with
little enthusiasm: the sunset ended the day's experiments.

Photography During the July Monarchy 27

 The Daguerreotype Cam
era; painter Daguerre
(1789-1851) improved
Niepce's technique with the
use of silver rather than
pewter plates in his camera.
However, the development
of the film still produced
dangerous iodized vapors,
required long exposures,
and needed precise timing.

At dawn, from many a window, amateur photographers

could be seen cautiously trying to capture an image of
a neighboring roof or a panorama of chimneys on the
sensitized plate. Soon cameras were routinely aimed at
monuments in most of Paris's famous squares; scientists
were successfully repeating the inventor's procedures.
Everyone was predicting the end of engraving, and the
opticians who displayed the first cameras were besieged
by prospective buyers. The daguerreorype was an inex
haustible subject at salons. It was the rage of Paris.35
As soon as the photographic process was made public,
inventors came along, each claiming to have discovered
the process. In France, a civil servant named Bayard, and
in England, the scientist Talbot, had both discovered a
photographic process using paper: the first with silver
iodide, the second with silver chloride. The fact that the
photographic process was invented at the same time by
three different individuals strongly suggests that photog
raphy responded to the needs of the time.
The new invention aroused the interest and curiosity
of men at all levels. Yet, the initial technical primitive-

2.8 Photography & Society


, -Long exposures meant ex phers had to transport large tents and portable labora
tend uncomfortable sit tories because the chemical preparations had to be made
tings (lithograph by Honore
Daumier, Position Consid
ered to be Most Comfort like resignation from patient subjects during long waits
able for having a Good
Daguerreotype).
ness and the extraordinary expense involved made it
temporarily available only to wealthy amateurs and sci
entists. Daguerre's invention, moreover, was very incon
venient. First of all, the light-sensitive silver plate could
be used only after its exposure to dangerous iodized
vapors.36 In addition, the plate could only be prepared
just before use and had to be developed immediately after
exposure. Finally, exposure time was often more than
half an hour. Arago indicated in his report that prepara
tions alone took thirty minutes to three-quarters of an
hour." To photograph landscapes the early photogra
at the site. Taking daguerreotype portraits required Job
in full sunlight. Beads of sweat dripping from the fore
heads and cheeks of the subjects left unartractive lines
on their powdered faces that inevitably showed up in the
final pictures.38 In addition to these problems, the da
guerreotype had yet another basic disadvantage: the
process resulted in only one plate, and copies could not be
made. Built by Daguerre himself, and sold by the Paris
optician Giroux, the first cameras were large and cum
bersome, weighing 50 kilograms (over 100 pounds), in
cluding accessories. The price, no less imposing, varied
between 300 and 400 francs, a sum vety few could afford.
The tremendous public interest in photography as well
as the early recognition of its economic importance led
to the technical improvement of the process, and soon the
price of cameras and equipment began to drop. Improve
ments began with the optical equipment. By the end of
1839, Baron Seguier was constructing a camera that
weighed no more than 3 I pounds and was to some ex
tent portable. Around 1840, the opticians Chevalier,
Soleil, Leresbours, Buron, and Monrmirel developed
equipment that could be produced at much lower prices,
and by 1841 cameras were priced at 250 to 300 francs.
Photography During theJuly Monarchy 29
Plates costing three to four francs just a year before were
now selling for one to one and a half francs. Although
annual sales in Paris had reached approximately 2,000
cameras and 500,000 plates by 1846, the number of en
thusiasts was still limited by the price. Finally, the lens
designed by the German optician Voigtlander became so
competitive with French equipment that the French were
forced to lower their prices and call the cameras they sold
'the German system.' The optician Leresbours's 1842
catalog listed the price as 200 francs.39
Reduced exposure time was another result of technical
improvements. [n 1839, the year photography was intro
duced to the public, the required sitting time was fifteen
minutes in full sunlight. A year later, thirteen minutes
in the shade were sufficient. By 184 I, exposure was re
duced to 1\\'0 or three minutes; by 1842 to only twenty
to forty seconds. Finally, a year or two later, the length
of sitting was no longer a problem in achieving a photo
graphic portrait.

-
.f""""",

30 Photography 6'- Society

Named 'Daguerreotypes' in
a French law, the images
produced by Daguerre's
camera included nearlv
everything from panoamas
to portraits (opposite:
Daguerre, The Louvre,
1839; clockwise from top:
Daguerre, 'lieU' of Paris,
1839; unknown American
photographer. Three
Women; unknown photog
rapher, Family Portrait, c.
184)

Photography During the July Monarchy 3I

 The Daguerreotype in
America: Fred Coombes's
Montgomery Street, San
Francisco, I8so.

The daguerreotype was a great success all over Europe,

but it was in America that it took hold and developed
into a prosperous business. Atthe end of r839, Daguerre
sent Franois Gouraud to the United States to organize
daguerreotype exhibitions and to give lectures on the
process. He was to promote the sales of the camera and
other accessories manufactured under Daguerre's super
vision by the Paris firm of Alphonse Giroux and Co.
Daguerre's business interest explains his haste in intro
ducing the invention abroad.
In r840 American society had not yet become rigidly
stratified, and initiative was the passport to success. Be
tween r840 and r860, the period of the daguerreotype's
greatest popularity, America was shifting from an agri
cultural to an industrial society as the result of numerous
technical advances: refrigeration, the invention of the
reaper, new developments in mass production, the ex
pansion of the railroads, and other products of American
ingenuity. It was the period of rapid urbanization in the
East and of the gold rush and the frantic development of
cities in the West. Proud of its Sllccess, the new country

3 2. Photography & Society

found in photography an ideal way to preserve and pro
mote its accomplishments. Enterprising Yankees set up
photographic 'saloons' in the cities and converted cov
ered wagons crossing the Great Plains and the Rocky
Mountains into daguerreotype srudios. It is estimated
that by 1850 there were already 2,000 daguerreotypists.
Just a few years later, in 1853 , some 3 million photo
graphs were taken annually, while the total output be
tween 1840 and 1860 was more than 30 million photo
graphs. Daguerreotypes cost between $2.50 and $ 5 .00,
depending on their size. Americans were estimated to
have spent between $8 million and $12 million in 1850
for portraits alone, representing 95 percent of photo
graphic production.4o In the young American democracy
this new method of self-portrairure was perfectly suited
to the pioneer taste, a taste proud of its achievements
and eager to preserve them for posterity.
However, it was only when Daguerre's nonreproduc
ible metallic plate was replaced by the glass negative that
the conditions necessaty for the development of the por
trait industty were finally fulfilled. The wet plate collodi
on process, using glass negatives instead of copper plates,
opened the way to mass production of photographic
portraits. At the same time, it stimulated the development
of such secondaty industries as the manufacture of cam
eras, glass plates, and chemical emulsions. Soon the paper
industry and smaller businesses were taking advantage
of the new demand for picture frames and photograph
albums. The daguerreotype thus gradually fell out of use
and a new phase in the histoty of photography began.

Photography During the July Monarchy 33

\

),
.j

: ;" ! , 'I , . ( . ) ('


F0hx TOllrnachun "'(J.QJ.r
, I S lO- T ';J I C" . .1rtit-photog
rapher ..1nJ dcrUIUUt. \\",1,
one of the tlrt responiblc
for ' rJ.i51ng Phutogr..1ph to
tht' height of .\rt through
hi, POrtfJ.ltS : Daumier lith
ograph , I S6 5 :
The First Portrait Photogre/phers
Eycry great technical discovery causes crises and catas
trophes. Old professions disappear and new ones devel
op. But if old occupations arc threatenedl nev..' ones sig
nify progress. The invention of photography began an
evolution which ultimately rendered obsolete the art of
the portrait as it was then practiced by painters, minia
turists, and engravers. Those who had adopted the old
trades in response to the needs of a rising hourgeoisie
rapidly lost their means of support. :\lany of these art
ists became the first photographers. Economic necessity
led the artists who had once attacked photography as an
artless tool \\-ithout a soul or spirit' to adopt the new
profession when their own trades were threatened with
extinction. Their previous experience as artists and crafts
men was partly responsible for the high quality of the
photographic industry during its early days:H The uses
both commercial and artistic-these early photographers
found for the new form were to direct the development
of photographic techniques for the rest of the nineteenth
century.
Technically primitive, early portrait photography was
exceptional in its artistic quality. As the technique be
came more sophisticated, the artistic quality of the work
declined accordingly. 'It is certainly profoundly signifi
cant that these first " artist-photographers" were most
active during those ten years which preceded the indus
trialization of photography.' 42
35
 Around 1843, four years after photography had en
tered the public domain, the first proletarian intellectuals
appeared in Paris-the Bohemians. Many of the first pho
tographers came from this group of arrists. Painters who
had failed to make a name for themselves, men of letters
who eked out a living by writing occasional articles,
miniaturists and engravers who had been deprived of a
livelihood by the new invention, were all part of the
group interested in early photography. In short, all sorts
of second-rate talents who had never made it turned to
the new medium, which seemed to promise a better way
of life.43
By the middle of the nineteenth century, photographic
technique had ceased to be experimental and had reached
the point were photographers no longer needed any spe
cial knowledge. The necessary tools were now being
manufactured by specialized industries, and the prepara
tion of developing or fixing baths no longer required a
parricular knowledge of chemistry. Equipment of vary
ingsizes was available in the shops of numerous opticians.
A series of easily understandable manuals on photogra
phy was published, providing an exact description of the
necessary procedures. A photographic workshop could
be set up in France for just a few hundred francs.
Aesthetically, the photographic portrait developed in
two contrary directions: one represented progress, the
other regression. In this chapter we shall examine the
portraitists of the first progressive phase of photographic
history, the arrist-photographers.
One of the most eminent photographers of the period
was Felix Toumachon Nadar, an illustrator, caricaturist,
writer, and aeronaut who opened a photography studio
in 1 8 5 3 on rue Saint-Lazare. His career was typical of
the first group of arrist-photographers. Born in 182.0 in
Paris," he spent his earliest childhood in Lyons where his
family had lived for generations. A member of the provin
cial intellectual bourgeoisie, his father was a bookseller,

3 6 Photography & Society

publisher, and printer by family tradition. The family
was rich, royalist, and socially influential; there was every
sign that the sons would become good scholars. Felix
Tournachon was sent to the College Bourbon in Patis
to prepare for the university, but away from family pres
sure he studied only intermittently. He went on to study
medicine at the secondary school in Lyons at the insis
tence of his parents, who found it an honorable profes
sion. There, he worked harder at literature than anatomy.
His student life ended abruptly when his father was
forced into bankruptcy by the enormous expenses he had
incurred in publishing, among other fiascos, a seven
langnage dictionary.'s
Tournachon certainly did not regret having to inter
rupt his studies, but now he had to find a way to earn
his living. He turned to literature, which had been his
chief interest since his school days in Patis. At eighteen
he began to wtite short articles for the Journal et {anal
de Commerce and the Entr'acte Lyonnais under the pseu
donym Nadar. At twenty-two he returned to Paris where
the population had almost doubled to over a million'
since the time of the Revolution. Like many people drawn
from the provinces to the city, Nadar hoped to find both
intellectual stimulation and the chance to rise socially.
He may have counted on establishing connections in the
art world through his relative, the caricaturist Gavami,
who was then a regular contributor to the famous satiri
cal newspaper Ie Charivari, for which Daumier did some
of his most acclaimed work. Gavami must have encour
aged his young relative to follow in his footsteps as a
caricaturist, but since Nadar didn't have any money to
go to art school, he taught himself. Before long, his first
caricatures began to appear in Parisian journals. Nadar
was interested in anything relating to the arts: at the same
time that he was publishing his first caricatures, he wrote
articles for the magazines Vogue, Ie Negotiateur, I'Au
dience, and short stories for Ie Corsaire," and he began

The First Portrait Photographers 37

 ,

to study painting. He made many friends with young art

ists who, like himself, lived on little or no money in cheap
hotels or attics in the Latin Quarter. With little thought
for tomorrow, they were seduced by the romantic sur
roundings and the free life of the artist.
The electric light had not yet been invented; just a few
gas lanterns lit the narrow, badly paved streets of the
Latin Quarter. Around 1836, the only means of public
transportation was the horse-drawn bus, and there were
only a few hundred of these in Paris. In the cafes and
small restaurants of the Left Bank, amidst the civil ser
vants, workers, artisans, and students, Nadar met the
Bohemians of the Latin Quarter" and joined some of his
ftiends (Murger, Champfleury, and Delveau among oth
ers) in the meetings of a group they had founded in
1843, which they ironically called Ie Club des Buveurs
d'eau (the Water Drinkers' Club). The group, whose
members in general led the 'very irregular life of the
Bohemian,' 49 met to discuss art and literature.
The presence of the Bohemians in French sociery was
an interesting phenomenon, characteristic of the period.
Although literature appeared largely unaffected by eco
nomic progress, industrialization did leave its mark. The
first changes in literature appeared in newspapers and
magazines with the expansion of advertising, incteasing
ly the most important source of revenue for the press,
and the introduction of the serialized novel in 1836. Out
of these changes grew a new industrialized literature.
Following the market principle of capitalism, when the
management of several French newspapers tripled their
readership by enlarging their format and curting their
subscription rates in half, other papers were forced to do
the same. These changes transformed literature, especial
ly that found in newspapers.S.
Writers now had to conform to the taste of the public
in order to attract and hold a readership. For the au
thor, paid by the word, money often became the mea-

38 Photography & Society

sure of his literary 'merchandise' and in many cases de
termined the quality of his literaty 'output.' 5. As a result,
the new bourgeois society presented an unexpected prob
lem for the artist. Even at royal courts, artists had main
tained a personal relationship with their patrons; their
position was simply that of craftsmen. But with the rise
of capitalism, the direct relationship between employer
and employee vanished. The 'free' artist, working for
whatever clients he could find, appeared with the further
depersonalization of human contacts. If he did not try
to comply with the taste of the time, he ended up either
in the poorhouse or in the morgue. 52
Thanks to education, democratized by the bourgeois
revolution, art ceased to be the special privilege of the
nobility and a few important cultured bourgeois. The
practice of art became open to all social classes and a
decisive change took place in the milieu of the French
intellectuals.
Socially speaking, the Bohemians of the I840S were
not a homogeneous group. The most successful among
them, the circle known as La Jeune France, were in their
late forties while Nadar and his friends were in their
twenties.53 Those of the first group who had already
achieved some prestige and fame both as artists and
writers exercised considerable influence on French public
opinion. But the lower echelons of the Bohemians, the
real 'intellectual proletariat,' met with little success. Some
were of peasant origin or offspring of working-class
craftsmen from the larger towns. Others, like Nadar,
came from the failed bourgeoisie. 54
like his friends, Nadar had tried at first to eke out
a living selling articles and drawings, but things soon
turned out badly for him, as they had for most of his
6;iends. There were not enough journals to publish their
work and one could scarcely live on the commissions.
The bourgeoisie would have nothing to do with the dis
reputable Bohemians, and among the Bohemians 'bour-

The First Portrait Photographers 3 9

geois' was the ultimate insult. 55 They felt alienated from By the mid-nineteenth cen
tury, artist-photographers
society and their poverty did, in fact, make them social
were attempting to make
outcasts. Their generation, by virtue of its social origins photography more than a
and marginal position in society, was in direct opposition mass production of por
traits. Nadar's portraits of
to the bourgeois class and its artistic values. To a large
Gustave Dore (top, 1859)
extent the young Bohemians were cut off from public and George Sand (middle,
expression of their artistic talents, because the majority 1859) and Carjat's portrait
of Charles Baudelaire (bot
of newspapers and magazines were slanted toward a
tom, 1859) come from the
bourgeoisie that favored the an of the juste milieu. early period of artistic por
With his paintbrush and pen, Nadar struck out against traits, when many of the
clients were artists and in
the hated bourgeoisie.56 In 1848, he joined those intel
tellectuals.
lectuals actively supporting the February Revolution.
Louis Blanc, one of its leaders, wa among his close
friends at the time. 57 In the years preceding the Revolu
tion, Nadar had accepted positions whim provided him
with a secure income, including work as a secretary to
Charles de Lesseps, and later, to the deputy V. Grandin,
both of whom were Republicans like himself. When the
Revolution broke out, he quit his post and left the next
day for Posnauie with his friend Faumery, hoping to take
pan in the Polish insurrection that had been inspired by
the February Revolution in Paris. During the voyage
through Germany, however, he had the misfortune of be
ing arrested, possibly because he was suspected of being
a revolutionary, and he was imprisoned at Eisleben dur
ing the entire period of the insurrection. 58
Upon his return to Paris, Nadar once again threw him
self into his literary work. He also published drawings
and caricatures. In 1849, he founded the Review Co
mique and contributed humorous drawings to Ie Journal
pour rire and Ie Charivari. He married at a very young
age, and because family responsibilities did not prevent
him from squandering his small earnings, he was con
stantly in need of money. One day while visiting his
writer friend Chavette, Nadar complained of his financial
difficulties. Chavette told him that another friend was
trying to sell his photographic equipment for a few hun-

40 Photography & Society

dred francs and suggested that Nadar become a photog
rapher.59 Chavette pressed him to try, after all, the pro
fession was very much in vogue and promised a good
living. A bit taken aback by the proposal, Nadar resisted
at first. Like most of his fellow Bohemians, he was preju
diced against photography: too many second-rate prac
titioners had already given the profession a bad name.
Abandon art? Consider only money? Nadar hesitated.
But compelled by necessity, he soon decided to take on
the new profession, and in 1853, fourteen years after
photography entered the public domain, the 3 3-year-old
Nadar opened a photographic studio at II 3 rue Saint
Lazare.
He soon became a celebrity. Every important figure in
the arts, literature, and politics flocked to his studio to
be photographed. He knew everyone in Paris. Nadar's
studio became the meeting place of the Parisian intel
lectual elite. The painter Delacroix, the engraver Doni:,
the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, the writer Champ
fleury, the criric Sant-Beuve, the poet Baudelaire, the rev
olutionary Bakunin, and many other celebrities of the
period came to pose for him.60 His camera portrayed
these faces of great character with the insights of a mas
ter, for Nadar was in close sympathy with most of his
models whose friendship and artistic interests he shared.
Nor did he abandon literature or caricatures for his new
work, but continued to contribute regularly to a number
of newspapers.
The portrait photographer's earliest clients were most
ly artists and intellectuals. Artists were willing to accept
the novelty, for they were much less bound to tradition
than the bourgeois, who regarded any technical advance
with suspicion.
One is fascinated by the images fixed on Nadar's plates.
In a sense, Nadar discovered the human face with the
camera. His sitters faces look out at you with startling,
lifelike intensity-seem almost as if they could speak. The

The First Portrait Photographers 4 I

lens seemed to dive into the very essence of their physiog Paul Nadar's portrait of his
father, Felix Toumachon
nomy. The pose served merely to underline the expres
Nadar, captured the per
sion of the subject. What Nadar sought was not the ex sonality and spirit of its
terior beauty of a face, but the inner spirit of a man. subject much as his father's
ponraits once did.
Retouching, which robs the face, and turns it into a dry,
lifeless image, belongs only to the later stages of his work.
Today as we admire these first photographic portraits,
we wonder how the first photographers succeeded in
turning their cameras into artistic instruments. Nadar
was an arrist to the tips of his fingers; his extraordinary
taste allowed him to use the photographic process with
judgment. Above all, his arristry was the result of his
close relationships with his models. A very personal in
terest bound him closely to their future arristic and per
sonal development. Friendships between the photogra-

42 Photography & Society

pher and his models were not troubled by the question
of money. Photography had not yet become a commodi
ty; the value of the photographer's work did not depend
on cash payments. Those artists who had themselves
photographed came to his studio with good will. At this
stage in the development of the photographic process,
the success of the portrait still depended in large part
on the efforts of the model himself. 'The power of ex
pression, wrested from the sitter through a long expo
sure, gives [Nadar's1 luminous and simple images their
lasting, profound charm-the charms of a well-sketched
or well-painted portrait, a verisimilitude that recent pho
tographers do not possess.' 61
Nadar's portraits are typical of the style of the first
phase in photographic portraiture. His photographs, like
those of some of his contemporaries-Carjat, Robinson,
Le Gray, and others-are works of art: and like all true
works of art, they were not produced for material rea
sons. A professional conscientiousness, an absence of
pretension, a strong intellectual and cultural background
made these early photographers the artists they were.
Looking at Nadar's and Carjat's portraits of Baudelaire,
one has to feel the same admiration and gratitude for the
photographers granted all true artists.
For Nadar, this kind of work was not without its prob
lems. Most of his friends, like himself, had little money.
As a result, Nadar made most of his first photographs
out of friendship and received little money for his work.
He returned to journalism for a short time, leaving his
studio, now near the Pantheon, in the hands of his broth
er. But soon he was back in the studio: !photography
could give the secure income he needed, t;;rt only if he
catered to the taste of a new clientele. It is at this point
that the second period in the history of photographic
style begins. Photographers who wanted to make money

]
were forced to adapt their artistic standards to the taste
of a new clientele which consisted of the rich bourgeoisie

The First Portrait Photographers 43

 Nadar's return to photography led to a lawsuit against
his brother Adrien concerning the name, Nadar, which
both wanted to use as their professional name. The court
decreed that Felix alone had the right to the name. The
name Nadar became so well known among the wealthy
bourgeoisie that he could charge one hundred francs per
portrait, allowing him a sufficient profit to hire a number
of assistants.
During this period, the Godard Brothers had become a
favorite topic of conversation because of their interest
in the great problem of aeronautics. All of Paris followed
their first balloon excursion with great curiosity. Drawn
to these exploits, as he was to many new inventions,
Nadar zealously devoted himself to a new idea: he would
take aerial photographs from a balloon."2 His first at
tempts failed because of the primitive camera he had to
use. (It was still the time of the wet-plate collodion proc
ess.) In addition, he had to set up a darkroom in the
basket of his balloon in order to sensitize the plates be
fore exposure, and finally there was the problem oflengrhy
exposure. Only in the spring of 1 8 56 was Nadar able to
take his first successful shots."3
His highly publicized experiments opened up a world
of new possibilities, particularly for the militaty. Nadar
took out a patent and was later named commander of a
company of aeronauts during the German siege of Paris.
He was responsible for following the enemy's movements
from a balloon floating over the St. Pierre Square (where
the Arc de Triomphe now stands) and, when possible,
for taking photographs.M
Nadar had become so fascinated by ballooning that he
decided to learn the new art from the Godard Brothers.
The three men signed an agreement whereby they would
collaborate to improve the invention. After several flights
in ordinaty balloons, Nadar constructed an enormous
balloon with a rudder which he called Ie Geant (the
Giant). He thought he had solved the great aeronautical

44 Photography & Society


Posed piaure of Nadar uk only clear result of these attemprs was that Ie Geant cost
ing photographs from his
balloon 'The Giant' (I863).
problem of the day: how to steer the balloon, once it
was in the air, without depending on air currents. On
4 October r863, all of Paris gathered to see him ascend
in Ie Geant.
Nadar's steering device failed and the balloon was
forced to land at Meaux. On r 8 October he tried once
again, taking his wife and some friends along for the ride.
The balloon went all the way to Hanover, where Nadar
was forced to land so abruptly that his family and friends
barely escaped with their lives. He tried again the follow
ing September in Brussels and a year later at Lyon. The
Nadar an immense fortune. Only after a long court bat"
tie was he able to force his partners, the Godard Brothers,
to absorb half the loss. This, however, was not enough
to straighten out his finances.os After endless attempts
Nadar still found himself debt-ridden and, without any
other means of improving his finances, returned once
again to portrait photography to rebuild his fortune.
If Nadar's career epitomizes the early success of the
arrist-photographers, then Le Gray's career illustrates
their demise. Born in Paris, Gustave Le Gray was the stu
dent of the painter Pere Picot, whose studio was quite
famous during the July Monarchy. Following in the foot
steps of David and Girodet, Picot had found his niche
in the painting of the period along with Alaux, Steuben,
and Vemet, among other celebtities who were working
to finish Versailles. Nor surprisingly, Le Gray found none
of the stimulation he sought in the academic painting
taught by Picot and his circle. Still young, but already
a father, he was continually in financial distress and
didn't know where to tum. Struggling with both arristic
conflicts and money problems, he found pleasure only
in the small laboratory he set up next to his studio. Like
many contemporary painters, he performed chemistry.
experiments, investigating the make-up of basic colors.
His interest in chemistry led him to photography and
The FiTSt Portrait Photographers 4 5
 1
soon he was devoting all his time to improvements in
the new process.
Like many painters of his day and encouraged by fam
ily and friends, he then abandoned painting for photogra
phy in the hopes of financial success. Le Gray soon found
a rich patron, the Count de Briges, who rented a studio
for him near the Paris city line where the prosperous sec
tion of La Madeleine is now located. At the time, this
part of the city was still sparsely inhabited; only occa
sional visitors wandered the streets or entered the few
small shops. This was before the westward expansion
of Paris when land could be bought for next to nothing.
The location, as it turned out, was well chosen. Almost
at the same time, two other photographic studios opened
up in the same house. On the ground floor, the Bisson
A self-portrait by Le Gray,
brothers opened an elegant shop where the public soon an early artist-photogra
gathered to admire their views of Switzerland, among pher whose reluctance to
produce commercially ac
the most popular of their beautiful photography. ceptable portraits forced
Sons of a coat-of-artns painter, the Bisson Brothers him out of business.
were born in Paris, the first in 1 8 1 4 and the second in
182.6. The eldest, who had begun as an architect, entered
the municipal service in 1 8 3 8 and became interested in
chemistry. He became a student of Dumas and Becquerel.
In addition to his photographic experiments, he invented
techniques for the brass and bronze coating of iron and
zinc, which has since become a lucrative industrial prac
tice. Like his father, who had been his first teacher, the
younger brother started his career by drawing and paint
ing coats of arms, but later he joined his older brother
in his experiments with photography. Like Le Gray, they
too found a rich backer, and around 1848 they opened
a plush studio on the floor above Le Gray's. The success
of the Bissons' studio was sensational; the public was
attracted not only by its tasteful luxury but by the quality
of their photographs displayed in the window. Their stu
dio soon became the meeting place of brilliant thinkers
and celebrated arrists. Seated on a great couch, passing

46 Photography & Sodety

photographs from hand to hand, the visitors discussed
the latest developments in photography. Writers, critics,
and artists flocked to the studio to look at the pictures.
Theophile Gautier, Louis Cormentin, Saint-Victor, Janin,
Gozlan, Mery, Preault, Delacroix, Penguilly, the Leleux,
and many other celebrated Frenchmen were among the
regulars. After leaving the Bisson Brothers, the visitors
would climb the stairs to the portraitist Le Gray's studio
to see his most recent work.
The buying power of this public, however, was as small
as its understanding and appreciation for the new art
was great. Generously Le Gray gave away his photo
graphs to favorite visitors. One can imagine how much
work went into a single print during the early days of
photography, but the high price of each portrait fright
ened the bourgeois public whose prosperity could have
guaranteed the photographers' future. The patrons of
Le Gray and the Bisson Brothers withdrew their support,
realizing that the new process was not going to bring in
much money. Their lack of business acumen forced
Le Gray and the Bisson Brothers to close their studios.
The final blow came with the appearance of Disderi's
new process that allowed him to sell photographs at
one-fifth their price. The Bissons and Le Gray had to
choose between meeting this new competition by mass
producing portraits or giving up photography.
Le Gray, for whom artistic concerns were always of
primary importance, refused to capitulate to the de
mands of mass production. Discouraged and embittered,
having no choice but to close his studio as quickly as
possible, he left Paris for Egypt. There he found work
as a drawing teacher and there he remained until his
death in 1868. Only a few of his photographs, including
some beautiful landscapes, remain. All of them testify
to his great ability. His unretouched portrait of Napoleon
III reveals more of the Emporer's personality than any
of the numerous contemporary painted portraits.

The First Portrait Photographers 47



48 Photography & Sodety

The Bisson Brothers and Le
Gray had to dose their stu
dio doors with the advent of
Disderi's mass-produced
portraits. Their dedication
to photography as an art
form yielded results such as
the Sissons' !'yfont Blanc
(opposite, top) and Le
Gray's Empress Eugenie, c.
1860 (opposite, bottom) for
as long as their sponsors-in
this case the Emperor and
Empress-financed [hem.
George Combe's portrai t
of David Octavius Hill,
taken toward the end of the
painter-photographer's life.
Le Gray was typical of the first artist-photographers
whose primary concern was not the commercial side of
their art. Victimized by the industry of photography,
which expanded along with the new bourgeois classes,
they suffered the fate of many of the other artisans whose
trades were changed or ruined by burgeoning industri
alization. The first photographers did not claim to be
artists. For the most part, they worked modestly for
themselves, their works known only to a small circle of
friends. It was the merchants of photography who had
artistic pretensions, for even as their work lost its artistic
merit, they sought to attract the buying public by calling
their \\'ares art.
Once the photographer Disderi had succeeded in sub
stantially increasing the number of his clients by mech
anizing through mass-production, Nadar adopted the
new technique and the new price_ He hired assistants to
retouch his photographs and devoted himself only to ar
ranging poses and receiving his guests. Once again he
became a rich man who could afford houses and land.
Aesthetically, however, his photographs gradually be
came less interesting, for he began to cater to his clients'
taste, which tended to favor exaggerated poses_ Only
rarely in these later photographs do we see the quali
ties that distinguished Nadar's work among the great
photographs.
David Octavius Hill also belonged to this first genera
tion of artist-photographers. Hill began his work in 1 84 3 ,
only four years after the official proclamation o f the in
vention in France, when photography was still in the
relatively primitive stage of the daguerreotype. With the
technical help of Robert Adamson, Hill, a painter by pro
fession, managed to achieve a beauty in his images that
remains unsurpassed. The son of a bookseller, Hill was
born in Perth, Scotland, in 1 80 2 . He spent most of his
life in the quiet, beautiful city of Edinburgh until his
death in 1870. Although of mediocre talent, Hill was
The First Portrait Photographers 49
much admired by his countrymen for the romantic land
scapes he painted in the style of the period. In May of
1 8 4 3 , he took part in the Edinburgh convention that
led to the founding of the Free Church of Scotland. More
than two hundred ecclasiastics gathered in the great hall
of Tanfield to announce their ,,;thdrawal from the Pres
byterian Church and the founding of a new autonomous
church. Hill was commissioned to record the first synod
in a monumental painting, but realizing the enormity of
the task, he decided to use photography as an aid. At
this time, the most widely used photographic process in
England was the calotype, developed by the scientist Fox
Talbot. During a trip to Italy, Talbot had used the camera
obscura as an aid in dra\ving landscapes. His subsequent
research led to the discovety of the calotype process,
which used a paper negative. These negatives could
yield multiple copies, a distinct advantage over the da
guerreotype, which was invented about the same time.
Hill used the calotype process \vith a camera similar
to Daguerre's, but his lens was so weak he was forced
to have his models pose for three to six minutes in full
sunlight. Despite subsequent improvements Hill contin
ued to use his first lens throughout his career; he must
have preferred the soft blurred image that resulted. His
portraits for the 1 843 Synod are remarkable, expecially
because of the subjects' sincere, intense fervor. It's as if
each figure were projecting the best of himself through
some sort of religious trance.
Hill's enormous painting of the synod, more than five
meters (fifteen feet) long, and depicting almost five hun
dred people, took him over twenty years to complete.
Today the painting is largely forgotten, but the photo
graphs which served as preliminary sketches remain
among the most stirring documents in the early history
of photography. 66
The golden age of the artist-photographers came to an
end fifteen years after the announcement of iepce's in-

50 Photography & Society


D. O. Hill used photo
graphs as preliminary
sketches for his paintings.
These pictures, including
his panoramic view of the
synod and numerous por
traits, are some of the most
compelling photographs of
the era (above: The Dis
ruption of the Church of
Scotland, 1843-1866;
opposite, top : Mrs. Rigby,
c. 1 8 4 5 ; middle : }am es
Nasymth, inventor, c.
1 8 4 5 ; bottom: John
Murray, publisher , c.
1845).
K r t K ; :J : 1 I"'U L '( i t-'; i i :'l : C,L I N :) I I I U l t
350 V i :; r C 2:A S T . , T C , i' -I-lj <tl. M 5 8 2K3
vention. The early anist-photographers \vere either re
placed by commercial photographers or they themselves
became professionals for whom profit \\'as more impor
tant than quality. Despite anempts to disguise their fi
nancial motives in the shape of artistic enterprise, the
controversy persisted: is photography an art? Though
hotly debated, the questioning did little to raise the taste
of the new generation of photographers.
Technical progress in itself has never been an enemy
of art. On the contrary, art benefits from technology.
But in the case of photography, technical advances de
prived the portrait of its artistic value for over half a
century. As part of an increasingly standardized and
bureaucratized economy, man and his \\'ork became pro
gressively subservient to the machine. This trend is re
flected in the second phase of the history of photography,
a phase in which photography became as industrialized
as the society it documented.
The First Portrait Pho tographers 5I
 I

,f ,

, j
t

fl

Father of commercial pho
tography, Andre Adolphe
Eugene Disdtri 1 8 1 ,} - 1 890'"
made mass-produced por
traits available within fifteen
years of Ni epce's invention.
Phutugr,zphv During the Second Empire
( r 85 I-I 870;
Around 1 8 50, French social and economic structure went
through serious changes that were reflected in the new
needs of the rising cbsses. Initially, apoleon Ill's poli
cies led France through a period of prosperity. He' felt
it his task to support the bourgeois .::lasses by promoting
industry and commerce. The State granted concessiom. to
the railroads', gave out subsidies, and extended credit.
New businesses sprang up everywhere; the wealth and
luxury of the bourgeoisie increased. The first large depart
ment stores opened in Pa ris - R on ,\L1rche, Le Lottt're,
fa Belle J.1rdiniere_ In 1 8 5 2., Bon I\-1arche grossed only
4 5 0,000 francs, but by 1 8 6 9 its profits had risen to 2 1
million.6;
The effects of this economic policy were also evident
among the petite bourgeoisie. apoleon I ll's adminis
tration created a giant machine of civil servants. This
group provided a new clientele for portrait photography_
Having achieved financial security, they sought to display
their new-found prosperity and photography \vas an
ideal vehicle.
The great Industrial Exposition of 1 8 5 5 , part of the
Paris \Vorld's Fair, included a special section on photog
raphy. Here, for the first time, the public at large was
introduced to photographic technique. The display set
the industrial development of photography in motion.
Hitherto, the photographic process had been known only
to a small group of artists and scientists. Arago's address
at the Academy of Sciences in 1 8 3 9 had been heard by
53
an audience of intellectual elite. The members of the first
photographic society, /a Societe be/iographique, founded
in 1 8 5 1 , were nearly all artists and scientists.68 Previous
ly, only the initiated sat for the camera. New faces now
began appearing in the picture.
At the Exposition, the public gathered enthusiastically
around the numerous photographs of important and fa
mous people. Today it is hard to comprehend the impact
of seeing for the first time, before one's very eyes, the
personalities one had only known and admired from
afar. The 1 8 5 5 Exposition also revealed for the first time
a new group of photographers who knew how to use the
camera tastefully. Most of them brought skills from their
former artistic careers that were especially useful to pho
tography. The sculptor Adam-Salomon's portraits of
politicians, financiers, and socialites attracted large
crowds, as did the work of painters like Adolphe, Berne
Bellecourt, and Louis de Lucy, the caricaturists Nadar,
Bertall, Carjat, and many others. The public preferred
large-format photographs, some of which were nearly
half a meter (two feet) high. These were executed with ex
traordinary care, and never retouched.6
As the clientele changed, the photographers themselves
began to emerge from different social backgrounds. The
sudden arrival of Napoleon III and his self.proclama
tion as Emperor on 2. December 1852, served as an ex
ample for many. Those who had previously led financial
ly insecure lives found sudden wealth in stock-market
speculations. The early period of the Empire provided
golden opportunities for men with business acumen who
had nothing to lose and who knew how to profit from
qnick turns of fortune. It was a time immensely favorable
to all businesses, and one that catered especially to the
demands of the middle class.
When a new field opens up that promises a quick
source of income, a flock of competitors frequently en
ters the arena from disparate backgrounds. Such new-

54 Photography & Society

comers are all the more numerous in professions where
few skills are required. Because by this time it required
little technical knowledge, photography had become
such a field. Commercial photography attracted a mass
of failures and incompetents who, lacking the training,
could never hope to enter more prestigious ptofessions.
New technical developments in photography were to
help them in their search for commercial success.
During the years 1 8 5 2 and 1 8 5 3 , a man appeared in
Paris who left an indelible impression on the history of
photography. In the very heart of Paris on the boulevard
des Italiens, a new photographic studio opened, owned
by a man named Disderi. Born in 1 8 I 9 in Paris, Disderi
was the son of an Italian clothier who had come to
France in search of better business opportuniries. Ac
cording to his contemporaries, Disderi had little educa
tion, but he was certainly a man of great native intelli
gence and common sense. With his skills, he could have
succeeded in any business during the mid-century years
of prosperity, but he chose to make his fortune in photog
raphy. He was acquainted with the designer Chandellier,
who had just inherited a large fortune from an uncle,
an old country priest, and from him Disderi was able
to borrow the funds needed to set up a large studio.
It was by chance that the particular process Disderi
developed brought about radical changes. Although the
basic improvements had been in the air for some rime,
Disderi happened to be the first photographer to sense
the needs of the moment and to find ways of fulfilling
them. Thus he imposed a new direction on photography.
Disderi quickly realized two things: that photography
was available only to a small group of rich people, and
that the high cost of the large format then in vogue de
manded enormous expenditures of time and effort. Pho
tographers generally worked alone and had to charge
high prices simply because it was impossible to produce
work in sufficient quantity to make a living. Disderi un

Photography During the Second Empire 55

derstood that photography would never reap its proper This uncut carte-de-visite of
eight different poses illus
financial rewards until a broader clientele could be
trates the principle behind
reached and the number of portrait commissions in Disdhi's mass-produced
creased. To achieve these goals, he had to take into ponraits. Because he was
able to make a single nega
account the economic status of the masses.
tive with a number of dif
It was Disderi's ingenious idea to reduce the portrait ferent exposures, he could
photograph to carte-de-visite size, approximately six by decrease the cost per print.

nine centimeters (2'h by 4 inches). He was able to make

a single negative with a dozen identical exposures on it
for one-fifth of the usual cost. He charged 20 francs
for twelve photographs. A single print had previously
cost anywhere from 50 to 100 francs. By effecting this
change in size and price, Disderi made photography ac-

56 Photography & Society

 cessible on a broad scale. Port raits were suddenly avail
able t o the lower middle class. N ow, for a reasonabl e
sum of money, a member of the economy-minded petit e
bourgeoisie could sat isfy his desires bot h t o emul at e the
rich and pres erve his image for post erity.
D isderi thus made a vogue of the phot ographic por
t rait , a fad whose popularity was increased furt her by a
curious and unexpected circumst ance. On 10 May 1 8 59,
N apoleon III, whil e leading an army on its way t o It aly,
st opped at D isderi' s st udio for a portrait sitt ing. The
whole army waited for him int ight format ion. From that
moment on, D isderi' s popularit y k new no bounds. His

: Disderi, Napoleon III,

innovat ions democrat ized th e portrait: k ings, st atesm en,
IIS9 scient ists, artists , civil servants, men of rich or modest
means all were equal before t he camera' s eye, and t he
endless lines of client s posing for his camera produced
millions in revenue.
I n 1854, D isderi, good businessman that he was, took
out a patent on thecarte-de-visite port rait.70 His fi rm be
camethe largest of it s k ind in all Europe. He hired a crew
of assist ant s and in addit ion t o his t wo st udios ( one of
which occupied t wo floors), he opened a l arge photo
graphic l aborat ot y which al lowed him to offer fort y
eight - hour service on hundreds of copies, for a relat ively
low ptice. Following the principle that mass production
reduces cost, D isderi pack aged port rait collect ions of con
t emporaty celeb rit ies. The popularit y of this scheme in
spired him t o dream up new projects . He suggested that
the army organize a phot ographic department , and on
1 9 February 1 8 6 1 , he was aut horiz ed by the War Minis
try t o foll ow t hrough wit h this proposal. Every regi ment
from t hen on was ent it led t o it s own phot ographer. 71
As earl y as 1 8 5 5 , D isderi realizedthe enormous impact
phot ogr aphy would have on al l aspect s of public life.
He sensed the important rol e it was going t o play in the
fut ure of such industries as print ed text iles and por
celains, as well as in the work of architect s, doctors,

Photography During the Second Empire 57

 ,

engineers, bnilders and others.72 The arts in general would

become popularized by photography. At this stage in
capitalism, whatever promoted individual interest seemed
to profit the economy as a whole.
_ It would be difficult to estimate the millions that Dis
deri made during his years of success; he was the kind
of self-made man who spent his money as quickly as he
earned it. His luxurious apartments, numerous country
homes, and costly stables were the talk of Paris. His fall,
however, was as sudden as his rise. He literally became
the victim of his own invention; his new methods had
ruined the artist-photographers who refused to follow
ut. Finally, Disderi himself couldn't compete.

Q Photographic studios now sprang up everywhete in

rance, especially in Paris. Photography attracted men
from all walks of life who left their professions to be
come photographers in the hope of making a fast fortune.
Fortier had been a dyer; Tripier, the son of a lawyer;
another, an office clerk, probably fired by his boss.73 All
that was necessary was the capital to set up a studio,
and purchase a camera and some equipment- and capital
during these prosperous times was not difficult to obtai uJ
Competition stimulated even more sophisticated tech
nical developments, for photographers now did every
thing possible to attract a clientele. Disderi basked in
his glory and, like many of the nouveaux riches, played
the part of the aristocrat, spending more time on land
speculations than on his profession. His reputation waned
as dissatisfied clients looked elsewhere for more consci
entious practitioners. For despite Disderi's patent, others
had begnn to make carte-de-visite photographs. Disderi
lost his fortune, and finding himself as poor as he had
been at the beginning of his career, was forced to give up
his studio, sell his belongings, and leave Paris. In Biar
ritz and Monaco he tried unsuccessfully to exploit his
once-famous name to attract a new set of clients, but
it didn't work. He became a poor and insignificant re-

58 Photography & Society

sort photographer, his glory vanished, his career finished.
He had ruined his health during the wild years of his
fame. Deaf and nearly blind, he died in a public home
in Paris.
[]'.he economic necessity of mass manufacture had
shaped the qualiry and social importance of photogra
phy. It
had become a large industry dependent on a vast
bourgeois clientele; and it had to respond to this cli
entele's taste as well as to its own economic requirement!]
The artistic taste of the bourgeoisie was epitomized in
the yearly exhibitions begun by Louis-Philippe. They
were presided over by a jury made up of museum direc
tors, members of the Academy, and a few amateurs whose
tastes corresponded with those of the government. Re
jecting any threat to the artistic canon of the day, they
excluded all the works of the Romantics, especially Dela
croix, and landscape painting of any sryle. Louis-Philippe
considered the promotion of patriotism and respect for
his regime a major function of art. He remodeled the
galleries of Versailles with frescoes depicting the past
glories of France. His taste in art was guided by the same
middle-of-the-road philosophy (Ie juste milieu) that guid
ed him in affairs of state. He was a natural enemy of
innovation.74
Of the historical painters favored by Louis-Philippe
and the Academy, the most important are Paul Delaroche,
Ikon Coignet, Robert Fleury, and Horace Vernet, the
painter of bartle scenes. Their works filled every major
exhibition, providing the focal point for public interest
as well as the major subjects for reviewers and critics.
Serious art, for the juste milieu painter, meant finding
the truth, which amounted to filling the canvas with
minute details. Design and color were determined by
fixed standards. Subtle hues were unacceptable and for
bright or striking effects, one simply added more color.
On the other hand, because an excess of verisimilitude
could alienate clients, the artist had to soften coarse fea-

Photography During the Second Empire 59

 ,

tures and touch up unattractive faces on occasion. His

goal was to show a face the buyer would find pleasing

while avoiding at all cost anything that could disturb
the client's sense of decorum.
The aesthetic views of these portrait painters, like the
views of the people they painted, were neither realistic
nor idealistic. They rejected the ugly without seeking ,

ideal beauty. The better painters tried to strike a balance

between the two extremes, hoping to make evetything
pleasant. Success meant that the painter also had to be a
good stage director and costume designer in order to pro
duce a detailed and pleasing likeness. The client was
impressed by the precision of the rendering, by the clever
ness of the brushstroke, and by the trompe l'oei! effect.
But most of all, he was impressed by the subject.
Artists whose livelihoods depended on flattering bour
geois taste eventually produced paintings of lower qual
ity. 'The pretty, the commonplace, the polite are what
really please them most. The precisely drawn miniature,
the flat and dty painting in pleasant reds and greens,
the smooth sculpture, the faithful reproduction of the
smallest detail. . . .' 75 The great mass of the public that
responded to this kind of precise, juste milieu painting
was uneducated. Economic progress had indeed opened
up the possibility of education for the masses, but intel
lectual freedom did not develop as quickly as economic
freedom. The average Frenchman who wanted to own a
work of art needed guidance, whether in buying a por
trait, a bust, a medallion, a religious painting, or a tomb.
He passively accepted the officially recognized painters.
The livelihood of any painter consequently depended on
his willingness to submit to the guidelines of the Acade
my. The taste of the general public was thus molded by
a state institution which itself expressed the precise values
of the bourgeoisie.
It was exactly this average public that made up the
bulk of the photographer's clientele. The photographer,

60 Photography & Society


Disderi represented the new
school in portraiture: props
and full-length shots
reduced the subject to a
stereotype much as the
physionotrace once did
(clockwise from top left:
The Actor, c. 1860; The
Savant, c. 1860; The
Writer, c. 1860; The Paint
er, c. 1860).
who had risen along with his clients, was also uneducat
ed. He could only do what his predecessors had done,
which was to copy the accepted styles, bringing to the
art of photography only acceptable aesthetic values.
Disderi's merit as a businessman had lain not only in
his ability to meet the economic requirements of his cli
entele, but also to understand their intellectual needs.
What is most striking about Disderi's innumerable pho
tographs is the total absence of individual expression so
characteristic of Nadar's works. Members of all profes
sions and all social classes parade before the viewer's
eyes, but real personalities are almost entirely obscured,
buried beneath conventional social types. While the art
ist-photographers had generally emphasized the head in
their portraits, the new photographers photographed the
entire body. Moreover, the props included in Disderi's
portraits tended to distract the viewer from the subject
in order to suggest a type rather than an individual.
Disderi's portraits of writers and scholars invariably
show the subject standing with his left arm leaning on
a table (a vestige of the old days of uncomfortably long
exposures), a quill pen in his right hand, his eyes lost
in thought. Large tomes are piled up in carefully planned
disorder on an elegantly shaped table that looks like any
thing but an actual worktable. The sitter himself seems
to be nothing more than a prop in the studio.
The pathetic gestures of a fat man in costume, wring
ing his hands, a dagger at his feet, is enough to make
us recognize 'an Operatic Tenor.' The singer himself,
no matter how famous, is no longer of interest. It is
Disderi's model, indeed almost a caricature, of the 'Op
era Singer' that eventually becomes the public's as well.
To depict a 'Painter' all one needs is a brush and an
easel, although a heavy curtain makes a picturesque back
ground. The 'Statesman' holds a roll of parchment; his
right hand rests on a heavy balustrade whose massive
curves suggest his responsibility-laden thoughts. And so
Photography During the Second Empire 61
62 Photogr':)phy 0- SOCIety
Dideri \\'d not alone in the photographer's studio became a theatrical prop room,
using props; "OIne phntog
rapher used theIn more ef
fectivelv thJ.n he, while
others uch less so. Ber consisted of a column, ;) curtain. and
tall\ skillful portrait of
Charles Paul de Kock ':op
posite) contr.lst5 with the
contrived dnd melodr..1 -
matie F.;uimg A./H.l)" b
Henrv Peach Robimon
(abo\:e).
ready to outfit any social role.
The typical props of a photographic studio in 1 86 "
.1 pedestal. Lean
ing against the pedestal. the suhject was photographed
full-length. half-length. or bust-size. Picturesque and
symbolic props indicating the social status of the model
filled out the background. Pre\ious studio arrangements
had scarcely been so elaborate. In the early days, the
first photographic victims had to sit under a skylight,
dripping with sweat, as they sat through minutes of im
mobility. To improve the situation the ..1pplti-tete was
invented. a chair with a metal brace which held the skull
steady from hehind and \\'a5 hidden from the lens. This
rather surgical-looking device prevented the picture from
being blurred during a long exposure. and with the magi
cal command, 'smile please,' the already stiff face broke
Photogr..lphy DUring the Second Empire 63


into a frozen smile. With these self-conscious and pallid

smirks, the last individual trait in portrait photographs
disappeared. There was no longer any individual expres

sion; photographic portraits became parodies of human
faces.
The hands played an important role in mid-century

photographs. Some subjects placed their right hand across

their breast; others held it nonchalantly at their belts or
let the hand drop to their thighs. One man plays with
his watch-chain, while another plunges his right hand

into his waistcoat in the manner of a great parliamentary

orator. Even in the more natural poses, these figures ap
pear inflated with pride and comically naive in their sense
of self-importance. The bourgeoisie projected their sriff
digniry even in the way they wore their eyeglasses.7
New technological advances generally developed in re
sponse to contemporary social needs. The bourgeois in
sistence on a 'pleasant,' pretrified self-image led to the

practice of retouching. All the unpleasant details which

the camera was unable to hide, freckles, an unattractive

nose, or wrinkles, could be transformed or eliminated

after the photograph was taken. The 1860s saw the ap

pearance of the first anastigmatic lenses, capable of an

unprecedented c1ariry. But this new c1ariry only rein

forced the trend toward retouching. While the painter

could make all the accidents of nature disappear, the

camera reproduced such details minutely and exactly.

Retouching now made it possible for the photographer

to eliminate any feature a client found disagreeable.

At the Industrial Exposition of I 8 5 5 the first retouched

prints were shown in Paris. The inventor Hampfstangl,

a photographer from Munich, caused a sensation by ex

hibiting two photographs, the original and a retouched

version. Retouching was to play a crucial role in the fu

ture of photography and also to hasten its downfall as

an art. The abusive use of retouching stripped photogra

phy of its most basic asset, faithful reproduction.

64 Photography & Society

 The following anecdote illustrates just how prevalent
retouching was: 'If someone returns his photograph and
points out to the photographer that he is sixty and not
thirty, that he has wrinkles on his forehead and folds on
his chin, as well as hollow cheeks and a flat nose that
bears no resemblance to the aquiline nose thatthe portrait
has given him, he is certain to receive the following re
ponse: "Oh!you wanted a portrait that looks like you. You
should have told us so. How could we have guessed!'" 77
The photographer who adopted the standards of juste
milieupainting felt that the unlined faced he achieved
through retouching was more artistic.78 The ruling taste
of the period preferred the soft, well-rounded contours
of Delaroche's paintings to Delacroix's tumultuous, col
orful canvases.
The photographer'S principal assistants in these days
were the retouchers and the color specialists who added
color to photographs. Colored photographs had become
the rage. While the photographer posed his model, he
took brief notes similar to those for a passport-skin col
oring, blue or brown eyes, chestnut-brown or black hair.
A few days later, the colored photograph, framed and
pasted on cardboard, was handed over to the client. In
this way photography soon became a substitute for the
miniature and the oil portrait.
Disderi, who had first adapted photography to the
needs of the new clientele, was also the first theoretician
of this kind in photography. In .862, he published a
book called L'Art de fa photographie in which he wrote
that the photographer could, like the painter, recreate
the spectacle of nature in all its forms, and in its accidents
of perspective, light, and shadow. He defined the charac
teristics of a good photograph as follows:
I . pleasant face!!];

2. overall clarity;
3 . well-defined shadows, halftones and brilliant
light areas;

Photography During the Second Empire 65



..
4. natural proponions; 'Like the painter with his
brush, the truly professional
5. shadow detail;
photographer knew how to
6. beauty!79 use his camera todisplay the
full imponance of the bour
geois man in his frock coat.'
This list alone shows to what extent Disderi adopted the
Disderi photographed this
aesthetic ideas prevailing among the iuste milieu paint bourgeois man, Monsieur
ers, and how he translated their ideas into photographic Adolphe Thiers, a decade
before the chief executive
technique.
(of the provisional govern
Following the principles of contemporaty historical ment) ordered the brutal
painting, exactitude in the representation of external suppression of the I87I
Paris Commune, a group
events, and therefore in the use of accessories and furni
that, incidentally, partici
ture, became the basic objective of the photographic por pated in the early days of
trait. Delaroche, for twenty years the most celebrated documentary photography
(see page 108).
painter of his time, prepared each of his paintings with
great attention to accuracy. His first sketch was followed
by a detailed watercolor. With the help of plaster or wax
dolls, he planned the grouping of figures and the distribu
tion of light and shadow. Sometimes well-known actors
posed as the principal characters, and evety detail in their
costuming and in the arrangement of the set was chosen
for historical accuracy.
The same principles inspired contemporary photogra
phers. Disderi proposed that 'the physical attitude con
form to the age, the stature, the habits, the manners of
the individual.' 80 For painters like Delaroche art was
historical description; the photographer simply followed
this well-established attitude. At the 1 8 5 5 Industrial
Exposition some English genre photographs on view
prompted Disderi to pose a question: 'Couldn't the pho
tographer compose genre and historical pictures with in
telligent and wellcostumed models in a large studio,
equipped ideally with all lighting effects, blinds, mirrors,

backgrounds of all sons, sets, props, and costumes?
Couldn't he search for Scheffer's sentiment and Ingres's
style? Couldn't he treat history like Paul Delaroche in
his painting of La Mort du Due de Guise?' 81
But this approach to photography never caught on.

66 Photography & Society

Photography During the Second Empire 67


Since the client had first to be flattered, Disderi observed:

'The photographer must find the greatest beauty that the
model is capable of projecting. It's a question of art, and
art searches for beauty.' It was the photographer's readi
ness to satisfy this need that turned him into a popular
man whose works filled family albums. From this time
on, the debonair, smiling bourgeois himself appeared on
mantelpieces, pedestals, sideboards, and apartment walls,
along with photographs of his favotite statesmen, schol
ars, and actresses. Photographs were not simply memen
tos-they had become the symbol of democracy. Like the

painter with his brush, the truly professional photogra
pher knew how to use his camera to display the full im

portance of the bourgeois man in his frock coat.

..

68 Photography & Society

i
Attitudes Toward Photography

Photography was the child of advances in science and the

rising classes' need for a new form of artistic expression.
From the time of its invention it became the focus of
violent controversy as to whether it was simply a techni
cal instrument capable of mechanically reproducing what
the lens saw, or whether it could be used in the expres
sion of an individual artistic sensibility. The debate, ac
companied by bitter personal attacks, was carried on in
journals, in studios, and even in the courts. The church
joined the argument. Its early hostile position inspired
this passage from a German newspaper in 1839: 'To fix
fleeting images is not only impossible, as has been demon
strated by very serious experiments in Germany, it is a
sacrilege. God has created man in His image and no hu
man machine can capture the image of God. He would
have to betray all his Eternal Principles to allow a French
man in Paris to unleash such a diabolical invention upon
the world.' 82
The simultaneous development of industty and tech
nology, and the growth of science to meet the needs of
industrialization, required rational economic forms. This
in tum transformed the values of the bourgeoisie. A new
awareness of reality led to a hitherto unknown apprecia
tion of nature. Art pushed toward objective representa
tion, a goal which corresponded with the essence of
photography. The petiod found its most characteristic
expression in the philosophy of positivism. Art became
charged with scientific precision and the faithful repro-


duction of an objectified reality. Taine's thoughts became

the leitmotiv for the new aesthetic: 'I want to reproduce

things as they are or as they would be even if I did not

exist.'
This new philosophical trend drew considerable atten

tion to photography. Couldn't an artist, with the help

of the new technique, achieve the objectivity he sought?

Wasn't photography, therefore, a new form of att? In

the belief that the camera equaled the palette, enthusias

tic supporters of this viewpoint insisted that, despite the

machinery, the photographer's artistry still prevailed. In
matters relating to originality, composition, and the
lighting of the subject, photographic artistry was ob
vious. Adverse opinion claimed that the camera was only
capable of mechanically reproducing objects and had
nothing in common with art.
Photography would certainly not have attracted the
lively interest of nineteenth-century artistic circles had
social changes not brought about new tastes. The social
changes resulting from the Revolution of 1848 created
the beginning of class consciousness in the proletariat,
and with the rise of the petite bourgeoisie, a new genera
tion of artists expressed a new kind of social criticism.
Just as it was becoming established, the bourgeois life
style became the target of this criticism. Starting in 1 8 3 5 ,
Henri Monnier tried his hand a t describing bourgeois life
with an almost photographic exactitude in his Popular

Sketches. During the same period, Flaubert's Madame

Bovary exposed the hypocritical life-style of the provin

cial petite bourgeoisie with a pitiless candor that trig

gered a social scandal.

Around 1 8 5 5 , public discussions focused on a new

movement in art called realism. Ironically, the same pub

lic that marveled at the faithful photographic copies of

nature on display at the 1 8 5 5 World's Fair and Indus

trial Exposition boycotted the paintings of the first real

ists. The Salon rejected Courbet, whose paintings bore

70 Photography & Society
the words, 'Without religion and ideals.' At his own ex
pense, Courbet organized an exhibition on the avenue
Montaigne and mounted the world 'realism' over the en
trance to the gallery_ The magazine Realism, which first
appeared in 1856, was the movement's manifesto.S3
The first realists' ideological position was inseparable
from positivist aesthetics, which could in fact have been
a result of the appearance of the camera_ Rejecting imagi
nation as nonobjective and prone to falsification because
of its subjectivity, they declared that one can only paint
what one sees. Accordingly, one's attitude toward nature
was to be totally impersonal, to the point where the art,
ist should be capable of painting ten identical canvases
in succession without hesitation or deviation. For these
artists who professed boundless enthusiasm for nature,
Courbet was the master, painting his subjects with the
form and color that he felt optical realiry revealed.84 A
work of art had to present objective contents drawn im
mediately from the surrounding environment.
Everywhere the message was the same: the young art
ist must learn from close contact with nature. Drive him
out of the dreary museums and away from lifeless art!
Open-air painring was born simultaneously with photog
raphy. Refusing to call themselves artists, these realist
painters thought of themselves as skilled crafrsmen and
nothing more. Their aesthetic equation of visual reality
with the reality of nature was also the premise of the
photographer, for whom reality in nature was defined
only by the optical image of nature. The resulting pic
ture could only reproduce what the photographer saw.
Imagination had little role in his work, which consisted
only in choosing the subject matter, evaluating the best
way to frame it, and selecting the pattern of light and
shadow. His work ended there, even before the shutter
clicked.
The photographer fulfilled the realists' demand that
the artist disappear discreetly behind his easel. The cam-

Attitudes TOWOTd Photography 71



..

..

era defined a reality which the photographer could alter, The nude in nineteenth-cen
tury painting and photog
but never basically transform. Because of its tie to the nat
raphy: realism reaches the
ural world, however, the lens of the camera revealed things most obvious mediums in
that no one had ever noticed before. The evetyday reali the search for objectivity in
art (above: Courbet, Le
ties of the visible world suddenly became important.
Repos; opposite: unknown
The dogmatism of the realists was undoubtedly ex photographer, Nude).
treme, but so was the hostility of the critics and the pub
lic at large. Only much later was the movement they
pioneered recognized and valued. Curiously enough, de
spite their love of objectivity, the realists refused to con
sider photography an art. In an article published in the
Revue de Paris, Champfleury, a writer of realist novels,
stated: 'What I see enters my head, descends to my pen,
and becomes what I have seen . . . As a man is not a ma
chine he cannot capture what he sees and feels in a me-

72 Photography & Society

chanical way. The novelist selects, groups, distributes.
Does the daguerreotypist go to so much trouble?'
Since photography was so closely connected with the
theories of realism and naturalism, its influence on the
arts became a topic of even more heated discussion.
Around r 8 50, the spokesman for official art began vehe
mently artacking the naturalists. In an article on the Sa
lon of r 850, the critic Delecluze declared that 'the taste
for Naturalism is dangerous to sublime art.' And yet he
observed, 'We have to admit that for the last ten years
a continually growing pressure has been exerted on the
imitative arts-photography and daguerreotypy-the
total effects of which artists are already being forced to
reckon with.' 85
Despite this revealing confession of his respect for

Attitudes Toward Photography 73

photography, Deleduze was compelled to fight the nat
uralists, for they represented social values opposed to his
respectable and conservative family background. His fa
ther, an architect and former student of David, supported
the views of the Academy and the conservative, tradition
bound bourgeoisie.
In his reviews of the Salon in the Journal des Debats,
Deleduze slipped from his fortner standards of ideal
beauty to those of the iuste milieu. He rejected the modern
school of naturalism and whenever possible, he blamed
photography for the dedine in art. The views of the sep
tuagenarian Deleduze, whose age and background made

it impossible for him to sympathize with the radical the

ory of the naturalists, were opposed to those of the critic
Francis Wey, who was thirty-three years old. The dif
ference in the two men's positions was typical of a gen

erational difference in critical opinion.

In his defense of photography, Du naturalisme dans

rart, Francis Wey tried to differentiate between the true

realists and the trend-following profiteers whom Dele
duze, convinced of the pernicious influence of photogra
phy, had confused with the realists. Francis Wey believed
that the new emphasis on nature rejuvenated art just
when it had reached a point of stagnation. 'This force
ful return to nature gives art some fresh life. . . . More
over, the over-use of nature is considerably less danger
ous than the under-use.' He asked ironically: 'Who is
most guilty in the eyes of the Academic painters and crit
ics? Who is the revolutionary, the pitiless leveler of
modern art? Photography.' Wey felt that, used well,

photography could help the artist to rise above the purely

mechanical copying of objects. 'What makes an artist
is never the drawing alone, nor the color, nor the fidelity
of reproduction, but divine inspiration, whose origin lies
outside of the material world. It is not the hand, but the
mind that makes a painter; the instrument only obeys.
In confronting artists with nature, photography has a

74 Photography & Society

good influence on them, because nature is an infinite
source of inspiration.' 86
The differences between the attitudes of Delecluze and
Wey were not simply personal. They were symptomatic
of the general enrichment of art by new ideas in a broad
er-minded age. In his Philosophie de l'art and his essay
la Fontaine et ses fables, Taine had prescribed an alto
gether new direction for aesthetics. 'To understand a
work of art, an artist, or a group of artists, one must
consider the intellectual climate and the customs of the
period in which they developed.' 87 'Products of the hu
man mind, like those in living nature, can only be ex
plained by their environment.' 88
f.I.yen from the positivist viewpoint, art was not simply
a matter of replicating nature. The positivist attitude
toward photograph was proof enough. Taine continues:
'Is art always the exact imitation of nature? Must we
conclude that imitation is the goal of art? . . . Photogra
phy is the art which reproduces in lines and tones the
shape of the object to be imitated most completely and
flawlessly against a flat background. Undoubtedly, pho
tography is a useful aid for painting and is sometimes
used tastefully by cultivated and intelligent men. But after
all, it does not aspire to be compared to painting. . . "J
At the Louvre, there is a portrait by Denner, who spent
four years painting it. Nothing in the face is left out:
the streaks on the skin, the imperceptible mottling on
the cheeks, the blackheads scattered on the nose, the
bluish coloring of the microscopic veins which curve
under the skin, the gleaming eyes which reflect nearby
objects. We are stupefied by the illusion: the head seems
to emerge from the frame; we have never seen such suc
cess or such patience. But ultimately, a large sketch by
Van Dyck is a hundred times more powerful; neither in
painting nor in the other arts is the prize given to trompe
l' oeil.' 89
Photographers who tried to get rich by exploiting the

Attitudes Toward Photography 75



76 Photngr.:Jphy .::,- Suciety

Antoine S.lmuel Adam-S'll
omon used lighting to stress
contours and features and
thus made his photographic
portraits morc than a mim
icking of the siner. That
he W.15 able to take portrait
photography beyond the
static c.lrte-de-t'isite to an
exprcssiyc form convin-.:cd
some contemporary artists
of photography\ merits
:Adam-Salomon, Ch,.1rlcs
Ambruise ThumJs).
vogue for portraits reinforced the bad reputation phot(
raphy \\'as earning in the art world. The small groLtv
of conscientious photographers could not always be eas
ily separated from the others. Thus the contemporary
artist's judgment of photography often seemed contra
dictory. In 1 8 5 8 the poet Lamartine condemned pho
tography as 'this chance invention which will never be
art, but only a plagiarism of nature through a lens.' He
changed his mind after seeing Adam-Salamon's beautiful
prints. Salomon's earlier experience as a sculptor had
taught him how to achieve light effects. His sense of
plasticity made his photographs especially attractive. Up
to this time, subjects had almost always been placed in
full light, which produced extremely harsh contrasts. In
his portraits, Adam-Salomon revealed the immense im
portance of the proper use of illumination. The resulting
effect instantly won Lamartine over. He wrote, 'Dis
turbed by the charlatanism of those \vho dishonor pho
tography by their countless copies, I had anathematized
the art. The photographer is the essence of photography.
Since I have admired Adam-Salamon's marvelous por
traits taken in a burst of light, I can no longer call it
a trade; it is an art. It is more than an art; it is a solar
phenomenon in which the artist collaborates \o,, irh the
sun: 90
The arguments among nineteenth-century artists were
based on divergent aesthetic values \\'ithin the intellectual
elite. Thus the classicist Ingres condemned naturalism on
the grounds that only 'the divine art of the Romans'
counted. For Ingres, an Academician, the photographer
was as despicable as all modern artists, the desecrators
of the 'sacred temple of art.' In his eyes photography
was a manifestation of an infernal progress: 'Kow they
want to confuse industry and art. Industry! \Ve refuse
to have anything to do with it! Let it stay where it is
and not follow in the footsteps of our school of Apollo,
dedicated solely to the arts of Greece and Rome.' 9 1 It
Attitudes Toward Photography 77
/

is not surprising to find Ingres's name among the arrists

who condemned photography, maintaining that it had
nothing to do with art.
First catering to the intellectual elite, photography next
reached out to the bourgeois middle classes. But when
commercial photographers made pictures to please an
uneducated public, even the initial supporters of photog
raphy became vehement critics.
For Baudelaire photography became a pretext for bit
terly condemning 'this class of uneducated and dull minds
that judge things only according to their physical shapes.'

Photography was only a means of flattering the vanity of
a public that understood nothing about art and preferred

trompe l'oeil images. 'Foul society has flung itself, like
Narcissus, to gaze at its trivial image on metal. . . . The

love for obscenity, as inveterate in the natural heart of
man as self-love, did not let such a beautiful opportunity

for self-satisfaction escape.' 92 Photography gave Baude
laire a means for criticizing the decadence of mass taste.

They 'plant themselves in front of a TItian or a Raphael
one of those painters immensely popularized thtough en
graving-then leave satisfied, more than one saying: "I
know my museum.'" 93
Baudelaire was an outsider, a bourgeois on the out
skirts of the bourgeoisie. Much of his life he was haunted
by pawnbrokers. He hated middle-class society, which
was as unwilling to understand him as he was incapable
of adapting to it. Considering himself an aristocrat, he
was opposed to any movement that would make art more
accessible to the masses, precisely the promise photogra
phy seemed to offer. 'Some democratic-minded writer
must have seen a cheap means of spreading among the
people a distaste for history and painting, thereby com
mirring a double sacrilege and insulting at the same time
the divine nature of painting and the sublime art of the
actor.' To Baudelaire photography was a form of indus
try that had nothing in common with art but was simply

78 Photography & Society

Charles Baudelaire (1821
1867), one of photogca
phy's first critics as well as
one of its first patrons (pho
tograph by Etienne Ca<jat).

an 'invention resulting from the mediocrity of modern

artists and a refuge for all unsuccessful painters.' He
interpreted the naturalist movement as a symbol of the
decadence of painting: 'In these deplorable days, a newly
developed industry has confirmed the stupidity of our
faith in it and destroyed what could remain divine in
the French spitit. . . . I believe in nature and I believe
only in nature. . . . I believe that art is and can only be
the exact copy of nature. . . . Thus an industry that would
give us an identical copy of nature would be the absolute
art. A vengeful God has answered their prayers with
Daguerre as his messiah. And now they say: "Since pho
tography gives us all the guarantees for exactness we
wish (they believe that, the fools!), art is photography.'' ' ..
Baudelaire argued that photography should return to its
real place as a simple tool, a servant of the arts and artists.
Neither printing nor stenography, for example, had cre
ated or produced literature.

Attitudes Toward Photography 79

 1

Delacroix considered photography a very valuable tool
in teaching drawing. The daguerreorype was something

to be used as a kind of translator, emphasizing the mys
teries of nature. But despite its semblance of accuracy,

photography could only reflect reality. Its precision made
a photograph only a constricted and servile copy. In a
review of Madame Cave's article, 'Drawing without a
Teacher,' Delacroix observed that 'painting is a matter

of one spirit speaking to another spirit, not science speak
ing to science.' Madame Cave's theory of photography

took up the old quarrel between the letter and the spirit.
She criticized artists who painted from daguerreotypes

instead of using the device as a sort of helpful diction
ary. She felt they considered themselves much closer to

nature, when the original mechanical result was still ob
vious in their painting. Their despair seemed overwhelm

ing when they saw the perfection of certain effects on
the metal plate. The harder they tried to imitate it, the

more they discovered their own weakness, for their work
was only a lifeless copy of a copy that is imperfect in other

respects. In short, the artist has become a machine har
nessed to yet another machine.9s

Delacroix rejected photography as a work of art; the
essential was not external resemblance, but the spirit.
The portraitist must reveal more than what is visible.
'Look closely at the daguerreotype portraits. Not one
of a hundred is bearable. What is surprising and enchant
ing in a face is much more than the facial features. A rna
chine can never perceive what we can see at first glance.' 96
The artist must above all understand and reproduce the
spirit of a man or the object he is describing.
Delacroix's criticism of photography was the logical
result of his general philosophy of art. He tried never
theless to appreciate the qualities of photography, in
which he saw more than just a new technique. Particu
larly interested in its development, he became a member I
of the first photographic society. Nadar was one of his

80 Photography & Society

close friends (the photographer was also a friend of Bau
delaire, about whom he published a book).
While most arrists denied the arristic merits of photog
raphy, the iuste milieu painters were enchanted by the
new technique. Upon seeing the first photographs, Dela
roche exclaimed: 'From today, painting is dead.' In 1839,
at a time when it was impossible to judge the artistic
value of the earliest daguerreotypes, he was the first to
insist on their artistic value. In a letter to Acago, which
was read at the seminal meeting of the Academy of Sci
ences in 1839, Delaroche asserted that 'this new medium
reproduces nature not only truthfully but also artistically.
The lines are correct, the forms are exact-all is as precise
as possible. A composition as rich in tone as in effect
and an energetic figure can be reproduced . . . . When
this technique becomes widespread, the most accurate
picture of any scene will easily be obtained in a few
moments.'97
Photography proved an ideal tool for historical paint
ers, to whom the question of exact reproduction was
vital. The iuste milieu painters were the first to use pho
tography for their work. Among them was the painter
Yvon, a student of Delacroix, who played an important
role in setting trends during the Second Empire. Famed
for his paintings of French victories, he developed a pre
cise and conventional style. As with the other battle
painters of the period, he was greatly admired by Na
poleon Ill.
One day Yvon decided to reproduce the battle of Sol
ferino. He wanted to portray the Emperor on horseback,
surrounded by his Chiefs-of-Staff, but it seemed impos
sible to obtain the necessaty sittings from the Head of
State. Accompanied by the photographer Bisson, Yvon
went to the Tuileries. The Emperor posed for him. Bisson
snapped the shutter, and the resulting painting became
famous under the title of I'Empereur au kepi. The event
had an unusual postscript. Bisson sold many copy prints

Attitudes Toward Photography 8I

from his negative of the Emperor. Yvon was furious,
and the affair resulted in legal action. The painter claimed
that the photograph was the result of his initiative alone,
that he had composed the image, and that he alone could
use it for his painting. Moreover, he had paid the pho
tographer for his work and he objected to publication
of the prints. His true motive however was the fear of
seeing his own work drop in value. If the photograph
was sold in large quantities, it would become obvious
that the painter had copied it exactly. The court decid
ed in favor of the painter and forbade the sale of the
photograph.98
Many of the cries of protest that artists of the period
raised against photography were motivated by self-inter
est. In a surprisingly short time, the metal plate had com
pletely taken over portraiture. The competition with
engravers, miniaturists, and painters was becoming dan
gerous for them, at a time when the portrait was becom
ing fashionable at all levels of bourgeois society. Com
missions for portraits provided the principal source of
income for all those artists. At the annual exhibitions, the
growing number of portraits, in comparison to land
scapes and still lifes, revealed the contemporary trend.99
As portraits multiplied, their dimensions grew smaller.
They were no longer meant to decorate enormous gal
leries of ancestors, but rather the walls of middle-class
apartments. The money-conscious and money-making
class had come to prefer photographs, which were cheap
and offered an exact rendering of the subject. For a few
additional francs, clever photographers colored the prints
with 'all-natural' pinks and blues. The artist who made
his living painting portraits saw the number of his com
missions drop daily. Photography was responsible for his
diminishing business, and it is not surprising that the
majority of such artists, especially those of little talent,
harbored a deep resentment toward the invention that
reduced their income.

82 Photography & Society

The Expansion and Artistic Decline of the
Photographic Profession

Competition and the desire to sell and buy to one's own

advantage are essential features of capitalism. Fear of
imagined competition as well as genuine aesthetic con
siderations led most painters to deny the artistic value of
photography.
Photographers, on the other hand, maintained that
photography was related to art, not industry. This self
approbation had a positive effect on the public, but when
faced with competition within their own camp, photog
raphers modified their positions whenever they thought
it profitable, and this led to controversy. The question
of art versus industry frequently served to camouflage
economic rivalry.
Competition increased as the photographic profession
expanded. By r 864, rwenty-five years after the invention
of photography, rwenty-five periodicals on the subject
were being issued in six different countries.100 Almost
as many photographic clubs had been founded to organ
ize exhibitions, protect the interests of their members,
create businesses, and sell photographs. French photog
raphers founded a commercial organization primarily for
marketing purposes that dealt with all aspects of photog
raphy: the manufacture of cameras, accessories, chemi
cals, and other products, and notably with the founding
of publishing houses and newspapers dealing with pho
tography. Founded in r862, it was called la Chambre
Syndicale de Photographie (The Photographic Trade
Union). With its headquarters in Paris, the organization
tried to act as the intermediary between the manufacturer
and the photographer, and between the photographer
and the public. One branch was involved in organizing
the import and export of photographic materials. As a
business, photography was making great strides.
Aside from direct portrait commissions, an important
source of revenue for the photographic studio came from
the sale of portraits of well-known figures and actors
reproduced in the thenpopular cartedevisite format.
Illustrated newspapers did not yet exist, and large news
papers had not thought to take advantage of the photo
graphs that had so sensationally popularized the faces of
important contemporaries. The public of 1860, finding it
particularly charming to own a picture of some well
known personage, boughtthe small photographic images.
Unfortunately, not every photographer had good con
necrions with the intellectual and political elite, and with
out this entree this kind of business was impossible. Not
every photographer, moreover, could survive on ordi
nary portraits of the bourgeoisie. Consequently, some
photographers copied popular portraits made by their
competitors, arguing that a photographic portrait was
not an original work of art. These encroachments led to
a famous trial and yet another debate over the eternal
question; is photography an art or an industry.
Because there were no special laws concerning photog
raphy in France in 1860, the courts were left to rule on
an issue that had brought artists, artisans, and men of
letters into violent conflict. Mayer and Pierson v. Bethe
der and Schwabbe, one of the most famous trials involv
ing photographers, grew out of a suit brought by one

photographic firm against another. The defendants relied

on the 'photography as non-art theory,' while the plain
tiffs maintained the contrary view with equal bitterness.
The court saw the matter as less cut-anddried, and the
case went through several appeals, with the final decision
establishing photography as art.'O'
 In the course of the nineteenth century, the courts not
only ruled on the artistic merits of photography but also
on a special form of photography that was beginning to
be of interest to the French government in its role as
arbiter of morals. The carte-devisite format was partic
ularly suitable for the circulation of certain images that
were not always in conformiry with the standards of
bourgeois decency. Some third-rate photographers, mak
ing little money from their portraits and more sensitive
to market demands than to social virtue, found a means
of building large fortunes in a short time. It was easy
enough to find enthusiasts. Even respectable merchants
(and more often their sons) were not above keeping pho
tographs of beautiful,-scantiIy clad women in their breast
pockets. The business, however, was not without its dan
gers; anyone caught trying to sell such photographs was
sentenced to a long term in prison. As early as 1850,
a law had been passed prohibiting the sale of obscene
photographs as an act offensive to both moraliry and
tradition. Not surprisingly, the first nude photographs,
which caused such a scandal and which were so vigor
ously condemned by the prosecutors, seem innocent to
day. Contemporary sex shops carry an altogether dif
ferent level of obscene photograph, to which the public
has become inured.
Portrait photography made great strides in the last
decades of the nineteenth century. By 189 I there were
more than a thousand studios in France and more than
half a million photographers employed. The total value
of their output had risen to nearly 30 million gold francs.
10 other European countries, and especially in America,
the change was even more apparent. But the very tech
nical progress that made portrait photography so suc
cessful was precisely what would slowly kill it. One of
the essential characteristics of photography is the tech
nique of mechanical reproduction. As production meth
ods became increasingly mechanized, manual labor and

Expansion of the Photographic Profession 85



the individual spirit that had so strongly influenced the The No. I Kodak Camera:
the challenge to profes
early years of photography gradually disappeared. Pho
sional photography. Now
tography became an increasingly impersonal trade. anyone who could afford to
Toward the end of the century, cameras were devel buy a camera and pay for
development could take a
oped that were even easier to operate. 'You press the but
photo. The roll film in the
ton, we do the rest,' was the famous Kodak slogan that foreground has been pulled
revolutionized the photographic market. Hundreds of OUt of the box only for illus
tration.
thousands of people who had come to depend on the
professional photographer for their portraits were now
learning to take their own pictures. Amateur photogra
phy made great ptogress, opening up a source of such
enormous profit for the photography stores that soon
they appeared in every neighborhood of every city. The
owners were mostly portrait photographers, who were
no longer able to make a living from portrait commis
sions. They continued to take orders, but clients soon
required professional work only for such special occa
sions as baptisms or weddings. Developing the work of

86 Photography & Society

Kodak produced a machine
so easily operated and
uansported that 'you press
the button, we do the rest'
became a reality. Because
the camera competed with
portrait photography, it
could have forced profes
sional photographers to be
come more innovative.
Instead, they conformed
more than ever to the tastes
of their clients, perhaps one
reason for the decline in ar
tistic photography.

Expansion of the Photographic Profession 87

amateur photographers and the sale of cameras and ac
cessories were now the only secure sources of income in
the photographic trade.
In 1 8 5 5 the anist-photographers still received 100
gold francs per print, but a few decades later the price
had dropped to around 20 francs. Toward the end of the
century, large depanment stores began to produce photo
graphs at even cheaper prices, and became dangerous
rivals of the professional photographer. Finally, the com
pletely automatic photo-vending machine, capable of
photographing, developing, and printing several copies
on paper in a few minutes, has deprived the professional
photographer of the considerable income he once made
from identification photographs. During the first ten A successful advertising
years of photography, when only a few skilled specialists campaign at home and
could operate cameras, photography was bathed in the abroad followed the inven
tion of the Kodak portable.
mystery of the creative act. But when the technique be Reproduction processes still
came so simple that anyone could easily operate a cam had not reached the point
era, photography quickly lost its prestige although not where photographs were
feasible for use in the adver
its appeal. tisements themselves.
By 1900 photographic ponraiture had become a limit
ed field. Photographers were more dependent than ever
on the taste of their clientele and obliged to work for
even less money. Both factors were responsible for the
artistic decline. During this period newly invented tech
niques using carbon, gum, oil, and bromoil printing were
adopted to make photographs look more like oil paint
ings, drawings, etchings, lithographs, and other tech
niques similar to painting. Influenced by the impression
istic style in painting, photographers usd soft-focus
imagery to add an 'artistic' touch to their prints. Ironical
ly, the soft-focus technique eliminated the most charac
teristic feature of the photographic image, its clariry.
The more the photograph looked like a substitute for
painting, the more the uneducated public found it 'artis
tic.' All sons of retouching techniques and chemical proc
esses were used to emphasize the soft-focus effect and

88 Photography & Society

The new definition of artis
tic photography included
soh-focus imagery, charac
teristic of impressionist
painting and perhaps con
tradictory to photography's
strongest feature, clarity.
Techniques using carbon,
gum, oil, and bromoil print
ing oontributed to the popu
lar impression that photos
could be transformed into
paintings (Puyo, Land
SC4pe, 1900).
to create different tonalities in prints which today would
be considered nonphotographic. To heighten the decep
tion, photographs were put in massive bronze or silver
frames decorated with complicated designs.
During this period of artistic decline, there were two
amateurs in particular who would in time become giants
in the history of photography. They were the Parisian
Eugene Atget ( r 8 5 7-r927) and the Berliner Heinrich
Zille ( r858-r 929). Both came from modest back
grounds. Atget, the son of a provincial coach builder,
was a sailor in his youth. He went to Paris in 1879 to
enroll in the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique. For a
time he worked as a touring actor and then he tried paint
ing, without any success. In 1899 he became a photogra
pher, using an inexpensive heavy-bellows camera, already
Expansion of the Photographic Profession 89


old-fashioned at the time. Carrying an enormous wooden

tripod, he scoured Paris every morning for subject mat
ter, returning in the evening to develop his 8 x Io-inch
plates in his kitchen. Above his door, he nailed a sign
'Photographs for artists.' For fifteen years, he photo
graphed the streets of Paris with their monuments and
fountains. Sometimes he photographed street peddlers
a man selling umbrellas, a beggar with his street organ.
Most of his clients were painters, but there were also
shop owners who bought his photos for their display
windows.

Atget was quite successful until the First World War,
when his business declined. By then painters had rejected

naturalism and used photographs for sketches less often.
In '920, Atget sold 2,000 plates to the Archives Na
tionales in Paris, asking ten francs per plate and copy,
but receiving only five. As he grew older, he stopped tak
ing photographs and lived on a meager income from the
sale of his earlier photographs. Man Ray lived near Atget
in a studio on rue Campagne-Premiere in Montparnasse.
He bought some of Atget's photographs in ' 9 2 5 , and
a year later had three of them published in the avant
garde magazine La Revolution surrealiste. The photo
grapher might have remained anonymous without Ray's
notice, but the surrealists, headed by Andre Breton, ad
mired the images of a bygone era which Atget had record
ed so precisely. The majority of his photographs were
street scenes. Atget was not interested in portraits. They
are captivating images, detailed scenes of empty places
reminiscent of still lifes.
Until the '975 publication of an album by the Berlin
photographer Heinriche Zille, Atget was considered the
sole father of documentary photography. We know now
that there were in fact two parents. The son of a lock
smith, Zille was nine years old when his father moved
to Berlin to take advantage of the industrial expansion
in the German capital. His parents' basement apartment,

90 Photography & Society

 Noteworthy photographers
such as Alfred Stieglitz, Ed
ward Steichen, and Anne
Brigman worked in the
genre of impressionist pho
tography. Examples (oppo
site) include Stieglitz's The
Street, 1903 (top); Stei
eben's Landscape, The
Pool, 1903 (middle); and
Brigman's The Pool, 1 9 1 2
(bottom), all of which ap
peared in the famous Cam
era Work magazine.
Eugene Atget's 'photo
graphs for artists' were most
often of empty streets (Paris,
z900).
,
,-
located in a densely populated section of the city, con
sisted of only one room. When the young boy left primary
school at fourteen, his father wanted him to serve as an
assistant in a butcher shop, but the young Zille was
frightened by the bloodiness involved.
At school, his teacher noticed his talent for drawing
and suggested he become a lithographer. 'It is a trade
where you can sit in a heated room, wearing a collar
and necktie. At four in the afternoon, you are free to
leave. After three years of apprenticeship, you are called
"sir." What more can you want?' asked his teacher.
Heinrich Zille later recounted that 'I really did not want
more. The hope of being called "sir" decided my fate.'
He perfected his drawing technique at night school, but
was largely a self-taught man who became an excellent
designer through hard work and perseverance. He worked
as a lithographer for the Berlin Photographic Club for
many years until his drawings eventually began to be ap-
Expansion of the Photographic Profession 9I


92 Photography & Society


Heinrich Zille and Eugene
Atget are considered the
fathers of documentary
photography. Unlike Atget,
who focused on street
scenes such as Passage de la
Reunion, 1910 (top) and
Hotel Lefebre, 1910/27
(bottom), ZiUe focused on
people (opposite: Berlin,
1900), and unlike portrait
photographers, Zille con
centrated on everyday en
vironments. His was a
humorous viewofthe street,
one that later characterized
photography such as that in
Life magazine.
preciated. Ultimately he was elected a member of the
Prussian Academy of Arts.
Zille was a kind of popular Daumier. He drew his en
vironment with a great deal of humor. Around 1890,
he began to take photographs of the workers and the petit
bourgeois in their own surroundings, which he used as
models. While Atget photographed empty streets, Zille
was interested in their inhabitants. In the marketplace,
it was not the display of goods that attracted his atten
tion, but the women making their purchases. At fairs he
did not take pictures of the rides or shows, but of the
spectators. This did not stop him from also photograph
ing the backyards of unsanitaty houses, where workers
lived and where the children of the poor walked bare
foot. Forty years before Brassai, he photographed graf
fiti and humorous inscriptions on shops. He never thought
of publicly showing his photographs. Moreover, no one
would have thought them of any value at a time when
only soft-focus photography was fashionable. This is the
reason Zille's previously unexhibited photographs have
only recently been discovered.
Heinrich Zille was the first 'concerned' photographer
for whom the message his subject matter conveyed was
of most importance. He was the first in a line of incorrupt
ible photojournalists who surfaced later, in the 1 9 3 0S,
and who followed in his footsteps without knowing of
his existence. For all these photojournalists, the camera
was thought to be more important than the photogra
pher; the camera was the sensitive tool that would allow
a situation or a personality to reveal itself.
Expansion of the Photographic Profession 93

The use of photography in
an reproduction .lltered the
way works of an were
vie'ed: a detail (auld ap
pear as expressi....e and com
plete as the whole piece.
With rhe help of photogra
phy, any artvmrk had the
potential to be as many art
works as it had angles,
planes, or details iC!sde
Freund photograph of Z.1-
potheque dh1inity . .\-lexica'. .
Photography as a Means of Art Reproduction
The debate over the artistic value of photography, dating
from the invention of the camera, seems only a limited
problem in comparison to the importance of photogra
phy as a means of art reproduction. Until photography
entered the scene, artworks had been accessible only to
an elite few. But when they could be reproduced by the
millions, art became a..... ailable to everyone. This change
began \"lith engraving and lithography, but only with the
invention of photography did '>"'orks of art lose the mys
tique of the unique creation.
Photography has not only altered the artist's vision,
it has changed man's view of art. The quality of a photo
graph of a sculpture or a painting depends on the man
behind the camera: his ahility to frame, to light, and to
emphasize the details of his ubjea can completely change
its appearance. Reproductions in art books change ac
cording to the scale of the reproduction. An unusually
enlarged detail distorts the overall effect of the sculpture
or a painting; a miniature can seem as large as 1ichel
angelo's Dauid in Florence. In his ,\...f usee imaginaire,
!\'1alraux asserts that ' reproduction has created fictitious
works of art by systematically falsifying scale and by pre
senting stamps of oriental seals and coins as if they were
columns, or amulets as if they \vere statues.' 1 0 2
If photography can misrepresent a work of art by dis
torting its dimensions, it was immensely helpful in re
moving art from its isolation. After photography the
reproduction of an artwork could be examined under
95


one's own lamp in the privacy of one's home, while the

original remained in a museum thousands of miles away.

As early as 1 860, Disderi had recognized the financial
possibilities of photographic reproductions. Inspired by
his good business sense, Disderi offered to photograph
the paintings in the Louvre for the French government.
He tried to secure the right of reproduction for himself,
but his booming portrait business did not allow him the
time to put his idea into practice.
Adolphe Braun was the first in France to undertake
the photographic reproduction of artworks.,o3 Born in
1 8 I l in the small Alsatian village of Dornach, near Mul
house, Braun made designs of flowers and fruits for Al
satian textile factories. He contacted Daguerre immedi Adolphe Braun was first
made famous by his repro
ately after the public announcement of photography, for
ductions of museum draw
he was quick to realize that the new technical process ings, possible only with the
could be extremely useful in reproducing designs. The inventions of the wet-plate
collodion and carbon paper,
two innovations that helped his work were the 1 8 5 I
which increased the sensi
development of the wet-plate collodion with increasingly tivity of the photographic
sensitive emulsions, and the 1860 invention of carbon process and the durability of
the print. Braun and his de
paper that assured the permanence of positive prints.
scendents would later
Around 1862, he began methodically to reproduce branch out to photograph
museum drawings, copying those of Holbein at Basel frescoes and srulptures.
thus popularizing works
first, then drawings from the Louvre, Vienna, Florence,
that had previously been
Milan, Venice, Dresden, and other museums. Thanks to seen only in museums

the variety of pigmenrs on the carbon paper, Braun (Braun photograph of
achieved results of the highest order. He also began to Lowering Christ from the
Cross).
edit the Autograpbes des Maitres.
By 1867, Braun's studio, once a workshop outfitted
for a few craftsmen, employed more than a hundred
workers and the production methods began to take on
an industrial character. Braun trained a group of photog
raphers to take pictures of museum collections for him.
Among the men he trained was a furmerpoliceman whom
he sent to Rome in 1868 to photograph the ceiling of the

Sistine Chapel. The project took six months to prepare

and two years of work. Enthusiastic, curious, and dedi- I

96 Photography & Society I

I
 Rl E::: , 1 [ISm UTE

The art reproductions that

earned Braun bis reputation
were preceded by his photo
graphs of flower arrange
ments and designs.

cated, the former policeman was the delight of the Vati

can. Even the Pope, it is said, became interested in the
Alsatian's work, and visited the chapel several times a
week to prowl around the scaffolding and to chat with
the photographer.,Q4 After the Sistine Chapel project,
Braun took pictures of the Farnese Palace, the frescoes
of the Roman churches, Michelangelo's sculptures, and
Raphael's paintings, finally turning to the museums of
London, Madrid, and Amsterdam. He had photographed
the great and the minor masters, amassing a collection
of more than 500,000 negatives.
After his death in 1877, Braun's son and grandson suc
ceeded to the family business, which grew and expanded
into other areas, especially after the invention of gelatin
silver-bromide plates in 1880. The Braun enterprise, ex
clusive distributor of all reproductions of works from the
Louvre, offered thousands of pictures in its 5 5o-page
catalog of 1887.

Photography as a Means of Art Reproduction 97


The oldest process of heliogravure, done by hand,
yielded only about 60 prints a day. With rotogravure
and mechanical printing, 1,5 00 to 2,000 prints could be
produced in an hour. In 1920, the 180 workers of Braun
and Company produced hundreds of albums and guides
and millions of postcards in color as well as in black and
white, with the demand for color double that for mono
chrome. Beginning in 1930, the company, by now headed
by fourth-generation Brauns, began to publish a seties
of books called les Maitres (The Masters), better known
as Musee de poche (pocket museums), with texts in three
languages. Modern painters like Van Gogh, Gauguin, I

98 Photography & Society

I
,
An enormous industry that
'Prang from art-reproduc
tion photography (more
specifically, photocollogra
phy) was the manufacture
of inexpensive picture post
cards. Via the postcard,
foreign vistas. museum col
lections. and girly pictures
found their way into mil
lions of homes (pre-I939
postcard of Kamakura).
.
Bonnard, Matisse, Braque, Picasso, and others were re
produced exclusively in color plates. The first were pub
lished as introductory library editions, but these were
soon followed by the publication and distribution of high
quality facsimiles that made the works of great painters
from all periods accessible to everyone. The publication
of Le Musee chez soi (the museum at home) allowed
millions who could not afford original works to have
their own collections at a reasonable price .
A gigantic industry based on reproductions grew up
all over Europe and America, with sales totaling many
millions of dollars. Some tasteful printers reproduced
only the best works of art, but there were many others
who simply published mediocre works that appealed to
the masses. The postcard, an offshoot of photomechani
cal reproduction, created yet another industry. In 1865,
the German postmaster general proposed a law permit
ting the use of postcards. A similar law was passed in
France in 1872; but widespread popularity of the post
card did not really begun until around 1900. Until then,
the price of postcards had been high because the only
available reproduction processes were drypoint, engrav
ing, and lithography. With the invention of photocollog
raphy which provided for photogravure, photolithogra
phy, and phototype, the cost of the postcard was soon
within everyone's means.
Franois Borich was the first to market the tourist
photographic postcard. He made a fortune with scenes
of his native Switzerland. The turn-of-the-century produc
tion statistics were:
Germany: population 50 million, 88 million cards;
England: population 3 8 . 5 million, 14 million cards;
Belgium: population 6.5 million, 1 2 million cards;
France: population 38 million, 8 million cards.
Eleven years later, in 1910, 123 million cards were esti
mated to have been printed in France alone, with 3 3 ,000
Photography as a Means ofArt Reproduction 99
 workers employed in the industry. Today the worldwide
annual sale of postcards is measured in the billions. lOS
Undoubtedly there is a psychological explanation for
the postcard vogue, an interest that overtook the world
so quickly. In his magnificent book I'Age d'or de la carte
postale (The Golden Age of the Postcard),
presents a series of perceptive and amusing reflections:
r 'In choosing a postcard, the purchaser identifies some
what with the artist who conceived it. Sending a post
card with the view of a landscape we are visiting is an
affirmation of our leisure to travel and thus becomes a
symbol of our social status. In writing personal things
that we know consciously or unconsciously anyone can
read, we take on an importance that removes us from
the anonymous crowd; to some extent we become a pub
lished author. In addition, it is a kind of exhibitionism
on the part of those who love, hate, or need to cry out
their passion to the world. For centuries, men waited
for the moment they could openly say "I love you" or
"shit." The success of the postcard thus lies in the mem
ory that we wish to prolong, the dream that we can buy
for little money, and voyeurism with all its substitutes.
Even laziness, for a card is more quickly written than a
letter, and finally, the collecting craze contributed to its
Lpopulariry: From its beginning the postcard became a
collector's item. At the tum of the century, there were
thirty-three magazines for card collectors in France. Simi
lar magazines existed in Germany, Italy, the United
States, Japan, and elsewhere. Tourism, which continues
to grow, had an immense influence on the spread of the
postcard; advertising had utilized it from the beginning.
In the I 960s almost a billion cards were printed in France
alone. Today most of them are printed in color.

100 Photogmpby & Society

 PART TWO

"

Even as early as the 1860s,
photographers used their
medium to documenr soci
ety. Eventually, documen
tary photographers went
beyond rhe simple record collective press portrait. Photography became a powerful
ing of public events to
portray the anguish, be
wildennem, and despair of'"
those affected by war and
poverty (opposite: Ernst
Haas, Homecoming Prison:
ers of War, Vienna, 1946;
above: Eugene Smith, Res The last decades of the nineteenth century mark the be
cue on Saipan, 1944).
Press Photography
The introduction of newspaper photography was a phe
nomenon of immense importance, one that changed the
outlook of the masses. Before the first press pictures, the
ordinary man could visualize only those events that took
place near him, on his street orin his village. Photography
opened a window, as it were. IThe faces of public person
alities became familiar and th"ings that happened all over
the globe were his to share. As the reader's outlook ex
panded, the world began to shrink.
-Visual mass media came into being with the first peri
odical photographs. While the written word is abstract,
the photograph is a concrete reflection of the world in
which all of us live. The individual, commissioned por
trait in the reader's home in a sense gave way to the
means of propaganda and the manipulation of opinion.
Industry, finance, government, the owners of the press
were abl to fashion the world in images after their own
interests.,
ginning of a new era. With the introduction of the elec
tric motor and the subsequent invention of faster means
of communication, industry developed by leaps and
bounds. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone
in 1 8 76. The network of railroads around the world cov
ered over 6 1 8 ,000 miles by 1 880. Also in 1 8 80, a news
paper carried the first photograph reproduced by purely
r03
mechanical means, a process that was to revolutionize The comforting portrayals
of the Crimean War by
the way events were seen and transmitted. Roger Fenton were among
Before 1880, illustrations in the press had been scarce, the first photographs chron
consisting of handmade wood engravings. Even photo icling the battlefield.
Fenton's piOlic-like photo
graphs were reprinted as engravings with the notc, 'after graphs revealed none of the
a photograph.' The new process was known in America horror that some contem
as halftone, and the first photograph to be reproduced porary pictures recorded,
mostly because Fenton was
in this way appeared on 4 March 1880, in the New York inhibited by his sponsors
Daily Herald with the caption, 'Shantytown.' The half and by his bulky, fairly
tone process uses a dot screen that translates the photo primitive equipment (The
Crimean War, r855).
graphic image into a pattern of dotes on a negative, which
is then transferred to a metal plate. Both the photographic
image and the composed text can then be run through
the press at the same time.
Press photography owes its development to many dis
coveries besides the mechanization of reproduction: the
invention of dty gelatin-bromide plates that can be pre
pared in advance ( 1 8 7 1 ) , improvements in lenses (the
first anastigmatic lenses were made in 1884), roll film
( 1 884), and the perfection of telegraphic transmission
of photographs ( 1 872).
It is only many years after a process has been invented
J
that all its implications can be understood. n England
it was not until 1 904 that the Daily Mirror began illus
trating its pages solely with photographs, and only in
1 9 1 9 in America did New York's Illustrated Daily News
follow suit. Halftone reproduction, discovered twenty
five years before, had finally caught on in newspape; 0
contrast, weekly and monthly magazines that had
more time to prepare each edition were already publish
ing photographs by 1 8 8 5 :-]'Iewspapers were slow to
adopt the new method beardse processing usually had to
be done outside the newspaper offices. Since deadlines
were of the utmost importance, the press could not af
ford to wait for photographs, and newspaper owners
hesitated to invest large sums of money in new machines.
A similar problem exists today in color photography.

104 Photography & Society

Color photographs are now standard fare in magazines,
but they are almost nonexistent in newspapers, because
colorplates still have to be made in specialized printing
plants.

Ever since the invention of photography, men had been

trying to capture public events, but for many years, prim
itive photographic techniques permitted only isolated
images taken in favorable lighting conditions. The adven
tures of the English photographer Roger Fenton, a law
yer who became one of the first war photographers, illus
trates the enormous obstacles the first documentary
photographers faced.

Press Photography 105

 ,

Fenton left England to photograph the Crimean War The photographs ofMathew
Brady and his assistants
in February 1 8 5 5 . He took four assistants with him, as
portrayed the Civil War
well as three horses and a large wagon that had once more realistically than the
belonged to a wine merchant, which served as his bed restricted works of Fenton
and stand as some of the
room and laborarory. The wagon was loaded with thirty
first candid (albeit some
six large cases of equipment, plus the harnesses and food times posed) picrures of
for the horses ! When he arrived at the front, Fenton dis war. However, confusion
surrounded the crediting of
covered that the hot climate made his work almost im
late nineteenth-century
possible. The atmosphere in his laboratory was stifling. photographs. A case in
It was still the period of wet plates, when the emulsion point is Brady's Rebel Cais
son Destroyed by Federal
had to be spread on each glass plate just before use. But
Shells. Fredericksburgh ,
Fenton's plates often dried up before he could insert them 1863, which is also attrib
in his camera. The exposures took from three to twenty uted to A. J. Russell, who
worked for the government
seconds in the broiling sun. After about three months of
during the Civil War.
strenuous work, he returned to London with nearly 360

106 Photograph}' & Society

Timothy O'Sullivan, one of plates. These images, showing only well-groomed soldiers
Brady's collaborators, pho
behind the firing line, give a false impression of war.
tographed the Union dead
rFenton's expedition had been financed on the condition
'\
with a graphic objectivity
that few contemporaries that he photograph none of the horrors of war, so as
matdted (Field Where Gen
\.-not to frighten the soldiers' families.'06
eral Reynolds Fell, Gettys
burg, .863). Unlike Fenton, Mathew Brady financed his war pho
tographs himself. He brought back thousands of glass
plates from the American Civil War, hoping to make
' . up for his expenses by selling the photographs when the
war ended. He used all of his own money, as well as
some borrowed funds to pay for supplies and the twenty
hired photographers who assisted him.
While Fenton's carefully censored photographs make
war look like a picnic, those of Brady and his collabora
tors (among them Timothy O'Sullivan and Alexander

Press Photography 1 07
 Gardner), convey its full horror. For the first time civil
ians saw the scorched earth, the burnt houses, the dis
tressed families, and the unnumbered dead that had never
been revealed in war reporting. We must remember,
moreover, that Brady's photographs, which never seem
posed even when they were, were taken with equipment
not much more sophisticated than Fenton's. Unfortu
nately, the sale of these photographs did not live up to
Brady's hopes. He lost his entire fortune to his principal
creditor, the manufacturer who had furnished him with
Before photography was
photographic supplies. The creditor printed and pub even 6hy years old, its speed
lished the photographs for several years, but Brady was and accuracy were turned

ruined financially. lo, against its subjects. The pic

tures of the Communards,
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the short many of which were taken
lived Paris Commune of 1871, hundreds of pictures were by E. Appect, were used by
the authorities to identify
taken of the Communards, who willingly allowed them
and condemn the surviving
selves to be photographed on the barricades. When the participants of the short
Commune fell, the police used these photographs to iden- lived Paris Commune (un
known photographer, The
. tify the Communards, who were nearly all executed.
Commune, 1871).
For the first time in history, photography became an
informer for the police. r". \
Also in 1870, the rwenry-one-year-old Dane, Jacob A. , (
Riis, landed in America. Several years later, as a journalist
for the New York Tribune, he was the first to use photog
raphy as a tool for social criticism. His most remarkable
work was a series of articles on the New York slums,
illustrated with photographs of immigrants living in
crowded, unsanitary tenements. His first book, How the
Other Half Lives, was published by Scribner's in 1890
and profoundly affected public opinion. Berween 1908
and 1914, the sociologist Lewis W. Hine, following Riis's
example, photographed children working rwelve hours a
Jacob Riis set a precedent
day in the factories and fields and documented their for pictorial social commen
miserable slum dwellings. ' ]:hese photographs helped tary with photos such as
convince Americans of the need for child-labor laws.?For
Bandits' Roost, 591/2 Mul
berry Street, New York
the first time, photography was used" s=fully /as a (1888), which depicted 'how
weapon in the fight to belterthellving conditions ofihe the other half lived.'

108 Photography & Society

,
Press Photography 109
 ,

I 10 Photography & Society

Lewis W. Hine's photo
phic 1:lCWru:ntation of
chlld-b.bor alerted th-e- pub
lic to- the plight of the poor
'-toppo-site: Spln-ner at
Frame, 1908; above: Group
of Breaker Boys Outside the
Mme, 1909i13).
\
poor. The effort has continued. In the early thirties,
under the auspices of the New Deal's Farm Security Ad
ministration, Roy Sttyker headed a team of photogra
phers who were sent to document the rural regions most
affected by the Depression. More recently, in 1 9 7 5 , the
French government funded a group of photographer
reporters to document the serious problems facing the
poor living on the outskirts of Paris.
Jacob A. Riis and Lewis W. Hine were amateurs who
used photography in order to give their articles more
credibility. As soon as photographs became a regular fea
ture in periodicals, Q.r.QJessional photoreport.ts appeared
to fill the new need. Th?;:a-ri.eaabadreptation almost
Press Photography II I
112 Photography & Society
The Fann Security Adminis
tration employed photog
raphers such as Walker
Evans, Dorothea Lange,
and Jack Delano to investi
gate and expose the poverty
in America's rural areas
during the Depression. Two
decades earlier, Jessie Tar
box Beals had taken similar
photographs of northern
urban life (opposite, top:
Walker Evans, Bud Field's
Family, 1 9 3 6 ; bottom: Jes
sie Tarbox Beals, In a Ten
ement Flat, New York,
1910; right: Jack Delano,
Hands of an Old Laborer,
1936).

immediately. Since cameras were sti1l very heavy, pho

tographers were selected for physical strengrh rather than
talent. In order to take indoor photographs, they explod
ed small amounts of magnesium powder that produced
a blinding light, a cloud of acrid smoke, and a nauseating
smell. Surprised by the sudden blinding flash, subjects
were often caught in unflanering poses, with their mouths
open or their eyes blinking. The subject was of little im
pottance to these first photoreporters, whose editors
measured the success of a photograph in terms of its
clarity and suitability for reproduction. Social and politi
cal figures, who were the first to be victimized, quickly
learned to despise photographers. Reporters had difficul
ty getting them admitted to help cover stories. None of
their photographs were signed, and for almost half a
centuty the press photographer was considered inferior,
a kind of servant who took orders, but who had no initia
tive. It took a whole new generation of photographers to
lend prestige to the profession that to this day is still
viewed with suspicion and treated with contempt by

Press Photography I13

many. As in the years just after its invention, photogra
phy continued to attract many uncultured individuals
who found it a way of earning a living that required
little training. They did not add to the prestige of photo
reporters in the eyes of those whom they sought to
photograph. In addition, a separate breed of reporter
grew up in Italy during the 1950S whose ethics actually
were suspect-the paparazzi. Their exploits only made the
profession seem more disreputable. We shall return to
them later.

1 14 Photography & Society


,.
, " ';, ,
,,'
With the development of
lighter and less distracting
equipment, photographers
such as Erich Salomon were
able to capture subjects off
guard, even noteworthy
subjects such as the dele
gates in his 1930 photo
graph, Conference at the
Hague (opposite), which
was taken at one a.m.
The Birth of Photojournalism in Germany
\ ?V
r'
....... .
.
\t "
,
I The task of the first photoreporters was SImply to pro-
\.duce isolated images to illustrate a story. (It was only
when the image itself became the story that photojour
.)
nalism was born A group of German photographers
were the first to report events with a series of photo
graphs accompanied by a text that was often reduced
to mere captions. Portrait photography had its origins in
France, but photojournalism began in Germany, where
the work of the first photoreporters truly deserving of
the name gave the profession prestige,
After the First World War, Germany went through a
period of serious political and economic crisis. In No
vember 1 9 I 8 the Kaiser's monarchy was replaced by the
Weimar Republic. The majority of German people, who
for centuries had been taught blind obedience to author
ity, did not understand the pluralistic party system on
which republican democracy is founded. To them the
new system was a sign of weakness, something that would
undermine their government's authority. From the start
the Social-Democrats, who headed the new Republic,
were accused of betraying their country by having signed
the Treaty of Versailles. Because its leadership was di
vided, the young democracy was weak. The left wing of
the Social-Democratic party broke off to organize the
Spartakusbund and threatened a revolution in Berlin,
The government crushed the movement with the help
of the Reichswehr, which was nothing more than the
Kaiser's old army, commanded by reactionary officers.
"5
The Spartakusbund leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg, were needlessly and cruelly assassinated but
the government's alliance with the army against the so
cialists was a fatal error that ultimately caused its down
fall. In 1920 the government itself was forced to quell
a rightist putseh in Berlin that the army had refused to
put down. In 1923 Hitler and General Ludendorff fo
mented a putsch in Munich. Hitler was arrested and sen
tenced to a few years in prison, only to be pardoned
several months later. He used his prison term to write
Mein Kampf, soon to become the German bible. The
economic situation was disastrous, partly because the
Treary of Versailles demanded heavier reparations than
Germany could pay. Moreover, in 1923, French troops
moved into the Rbineland, Germany's center of heavy
industry, with the intention of dismantling its factories.
During' this period of inflation and financial ruin prices
were calculated in the billions. It was not unusual to
meet people in the streets carrying small suitcases full
of the banknotes they could no longer fit into ordinary
wallets. lOS The devaluation of the mark in 1923 (one bil
lion Reichsmarks were worth one Rentenmark) affected
those with large assets and substantial real estate as well
as the average citizen, but for the latter it meant finan
cial ruin. Not surprisingly, ten years later the middle
classes voted en masse for Hitler.
The Weimar Republic lasted scarcely fifteen years, but
the liberal spirit which settled in Germany during this
short period was the catalyst for extraordinary develop
ments in the arts and letters. During the 1 920S, a bril
liant circle of writers flourished in Germany. In 1 924,
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain was published;
in 1925, Franz Kafka's The Trial appeared one year after
his death. In his incomplete, posthumous novel, Kafka
prophetically described the reign of terror that would
overwhelm Germany in the 1930S.
The new musicians of the twenties included the com-

II 6 Photography & Society

 posers Alban Berg and Paul Hindemith, and the conduc
tors Wilhelm Furtwangler and Bruno Walter. Albert Ein
stein received the Nobel Prize in 1921. The psychoanalytic
research of Freud and his psychotherapy became famous
throughout the world. The painters Franz Marc, Vasili
Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Kathe Kollwitz, and
George Grosz dominated new movements in art. Kurt
Schwitters and Richard Huelsenbeck were foremost
among the representatives of the Dada movement in
Germany. In 1919, the architect Walter Gropius founded
the Bauhaus, whose influence rapidly extended beyond
the German borders. Through the teachings of Moholy
Nagy, the Bauhaus was to have a decisive impact on
photography. We shall return to Moholy-Nagy later.
Berlin, the capital of the young Republic, became the
center of German artistic and intellectual movements.
Its theater became celebrated for the plays of Bertolt
Brecht, Ernst Toller, and Karl Zuckmayer and for the
work of the directors Max Reinhardt and Edwin Piscator.
The silent films of the U.F.A., directed by Fritz Lang,
Ernst Lubitsch, and others were internationally known.
FinaUy, the press, which had been strictly censored during
the war, was allowed total freedom under the Republic.

\
D1ustrated magazines began to appear in all the large
j German cities. The two most important were the Berliner
Illustrirte and the Munchner Illustrierte Presse. Both had
press runs of nearly 2 million copies at the height of
their success and were sold for only 25 pfennig (ten cents)
a copy. It was the !><ginning of the golden age of modem
photojournalism.1prawings gradually disappeared from
\ magazines to be replaced by photographs of current
... - . WVents. ,
Unlike the previous generation of reporters, the pho
tographers working for this press were gentlemen who
could scarcely be distinguished by education, dIess, and
manner from the diguitaries they photographed. When
they attended the opera, a famous press ball, or any other

The Birth of Photoi""""'1ism in Germany I I7

 ,
,I

occasion where formal dress was required, the new pho ,

tographers also appeared fashionably attired. Well-man

nered, fluent in foreign langnages, indistinguishable from
the other guests, they no longer belonged to a class of

servile employees. They were themselves members of the
bourgeois or aristocratic society that had lost money and
political power after the war, but retained social status. ,

" The most celebrated of these photographers was Dr.

Erich Salomon who, as his title suggests, received a clas

sical education. Aware of his counttymen's respect for

titles, he insisted on being called 'Herr Doktor.' Born ,

in Berlin in 1886, he came from a well-to-do family of

bankers. The large number of photographs he took and ,
the many subjects he covered during his brief period of
activity, between 1928 and 1 9 3 3 , reveal a tireless energy
and enormous talent. He studied law, was drafted in
1 914, and for several years was held prisoner by the
French. When he returned to Berlin in 1 9 1 8 , he found
the postwar economic situation unfavorable for setting
up a law practice. Because his family like much of the
middle class had lost a great part of its fortune, Salomon
tried to make a living in the business world. He joined
the advertising department of Ullstein Publishing Com
pany. One of his responsibilities was making sure that the
peasants who rented cut the walls of their houses for ad

vertising billboards abided by their contracts. In connec

tion with a trial that ensued, Salomon used a camera for

the first time in his life when he borrowed one to take

pictures that could serve as evidence in court.

Asked how he decided to become a professional pho

tographer, Salomon wrote, 'One Sunday, I was seated

on the terrace of a restaurant along the banks of the

Spree when a violent storm broke loose. A few minutes

later, a newspaper vendor came by and described a cy

clone that had uprooted some trees and killed a woman.
So I took a taxi and found a photographer. I offered
I
the pictures he had taken to the Ullstein Publishing Com-

1 1 8 Photography & Society

The Ermanox, the first
lightweight, compact cam
era, permitted photogra
phers to venture indoors for
candid pictures with the ad
dition of a new lens. The
new machine still had its
drawbacks-the shutter was
Doisy-but photographers
such as Salomon were able
to improvise and succeeded
in taking the kind of candid
shot that would revolution
De photojournalism. Soon
me 'secret' photograph,
which caught public figures
unawares at work and at
play, would become the
nademark of many news
papers.

pany and received roo marks for them. As I handed 90

marks to the photographer, I realized that it would have
been more worthwhile to have taken the photographs
myself. The next day I bought my own camera.' laO
In 1925 advertisements for a new camera began to
appear in the newspapers, illustrated with a night pho
tograph of Dresden:

N I G H T P H OT O G R A P H S A N D I N D O O R
PH OTOGRAPHY W I T H O U T F L A S H

You can take photographs i n the theater during a per

formance-short or instanteous exposures. With the
E R M A N O X camera-small, easy to handle, and not
easily seen. ItO

Lightweight, compact, and equipped with an F:2 lens

which gave exceptional luminosity for the period, the
Ermanox was a great invention. Photographs without a

The Birth of Photojournabsm in Germany II 9

flash had become possible and Salomon was the first to
attempt candid indoor photography. His results were al
ways lively, because they were unposed. Modem photo
journalism was underway. It was no longer the clarity
of the image that counted, but the subject matter. Tak
ing interior photographs, however, still required a tri
pod and glass plates, since the existing film was not as
sensitive. Moreover, a special bath solution was neces
sary to develop the plates. Finally, the depth of field was
so limited that distance had to be measured down to
the centimeter. To remain unnoticed, the photographer
must be neither seen nor heard. Even without a flash,
the shutter release on the Ermanox was much too noisy;
the click immediately betrayed the photographer's pres
ence. Salomon had a special shutter-release built that op
erated noiselessly, but the plates still required an expo
sure time of nearly a full second. Since photographs that
sold to the papers had to be unique and up-to-the-minute,
all these obstacles must often have seemed insurmount
able; but Salomon triumphed.
In 192.8, taking photographs in German courts was
strictly forbidden. Salomon's first published picture,
which appeared in the Berliner Illustrirte of 1 9 Febru
ary 192.8 was, however, taken in court. Slightly blurred,
Salomon's single photograph of the trial appeared with
the following caption: 'A much-talked-about criminal
trial: the student Krantz in front of his judges.' Numerous
articles had appeared before the trial using the Krantz
scandal as a ploy to attack the educational system and
to criticize postwar youth. The day after a surprise party
that three teenage boys and a sixteen-year-old girl had
attended, two of the boys' bodies were discovered. One
of the dead boys, it turned out, had had intimate rela
tions with the girl. The survivor, a seventeen-year-old
high s<;hool student, was accused of having killed the
others out of jealousy. Krantz was finally acquitted.'11
Years later, he would be known to the literary world for

12.0 Photography & Society I

the novels he published under the pseudonym Ernst Erich
Noth.
The 'unique' photograph of the Krantz trial brought
Salomon as much money as he earned in a month at Ull
stein's. He soon left publishing to devote himself entirely
to photography. Four photographs of another murder
trial appeared later in the same magazine and caused a
sensation. Salomon had smuggled his camera into the
courtroom in a box, and his tripod in his scarf.
From then on, he took photographs wherever impor
tant events occurred. He became the official photogra
pher for international conferences and attended sessions
of the Reichstag, photographing all the important politi
cal and artistic figJIres. He gained entrance everywhere.
At the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact in the Hague
he noted: 'I was seated at the place reserved for a Polish
minister who had not shown up.' 112
Salomon quickly realized that it was more difficult to
be expelled from a place than to be admitted. Infinite
patience was necessary to be a good photoreporter. Salo
mon was enormously successful. During a long night ses
sion with German and French ministers at the second
Hague Conference, for example, he took qnite humor
ous pictures of some of the participants who had fallen
asleep. He photographed Lloyd George and Chamberlain
in their London offices, and took the first photographs
of the High Court of Justice in England. He was not con
temptuous of the public, and some of his photographs
look like Daumier's caricatures. Every notable in the arts
was captured by his camera. He photographed Richard
Strauss, Toscanini, Casals. In America, he photographed
Randolph Hearst at San Simeon. Back in Berlin, he pho
tographed Einstein and such writers as Thomas Mann.
In 1931, scarcely three years after he began his work,
he published an album of 102 photographs under the
title,Beri4hmte Zeitgenossen in Unbewachten Augen
blicken (Celebrated Contemporaries in Unguarded Mo-

The Birth of Photo;ournalism in Gernldny 121

ments). In a long preface he explained his ideas and .'
methods. Except for certain technical problems that have
since been solved, his advice is still valid today:
The work of a press photographer who aspires to be more
than just a craftsman is a continuous struggle for his image.
As the hunter is a captive of his passion to pursue his game,
so the photographer is obsessed by the unique photograph
that he wants to obtain. It is a continual battle against prej
udices resulting from photographers who still work with
flashes, against the administration, the employees, the po
lice, the security guards, against poor lighting and the enOf

mous problems in taking photographs of people in motion.
They must be caught at the precise moment when they are
not moving. Then there is the fight against time, for every
newspaper has its deadline that must be met. Above all, a
photojournalist must have infinite patience, must never be
come flustered. He must be on top of all events and know
when and where they take place. If necessary, he must USe
all sorts of tricks, even if they do not always work.

Salomon gave the following anecdote as an example:

When I arrived at the first Hague Conference, in the summer

of 1929, I learned that the ministers Henderson, Stresemann,
Briand, Wirth, and the Belgian Foreign Minister Hymans
would be meeting every afternoon at four o'clock on the bal
cony of the Scheveningen Grand Hotel. As I could not re
ceive pennission to take photographs of this balcony from
the inside, I could only photograph those talks from out

side. The balcony was located fifty feet above a garage in
front of which there were only the beach and the sea. There

was no house facing it. I rented a sixty-foot fire ladder on

wheels and borrowed a white shirt, a pail, and a paintbrush

from the fout delivery men to make the Dutch police believe
that I was going to repaint some billboards. I wanted to
be raised on the ladder and, at a distance of forty feet, to
photograph tbe diplomats on this historic balcony. To my
great disappointment, the head of the team told me that I
had to climb partway up the ladder first and secure it with
a rope before I could go on to the top. When it was finally

122 Photography & So<iety

I
 in place, the angle was so steep that I would have fallen
if I had had to use my two hands to photograph. I had to
lean the ladder, but this maneuver seemed so dangerous and
attracted so much attention that even Henderson noticed
it through the window. Just as I was about to climb to the
top, the head of the English press corps, followed by a secret
agent, appeared and told me in no uncenain terms to remove
the ladder immediately. In order to avoid a scandal, I had to
agree. The only photograph I could take was of the ladder.l13

When no clever idea came to mind to help him gain

access to a conference room, Salomon photographed the
antechamber, taking funny pictures of hats and umbrel- .
las, or of a sleeping guard. Again he surprised the 'Six
Greats' of the period, Briand, Lord Cushendun, Hermann
Muller, Scialoja, Hymans, and von Schubert, this time
breakfasting at the Beaurivage Hotel in Geneva. The pho
tograph appeared in September 1929 in the Berliner I1-
lustTirte with the caption: 'A unique document!' At the
time, it was indeed a novelty to photograph important
people, or those considered important, in their private
moments.
Aristide Briand nicknamed Salomon 'Doctor Mephis
topheles' because of the two gray tufts of hair decorat
ing his forehead. Salomon became a celebrity whose
photographs were all sigued. They were also all snapped
up at high prices by various European picture magazines.
The photographer was no longer anonymous. He had be
come a celebrity in his own right.
Publication of 'secret' photographs became one of the
attracrions of the illustrated press and, when that was
really impossible, carefully posed photographs called
'ultra-secret' were published. Under the title 'the first
photographs ever taken in the game rooms of the Monte
Carlo Casino,' Salomon published a series of photo
graphs in April 1929, each one of which had been posed.
Under no circumstances would the casino management
allow photographs of gambling celebrities, but it did per-

The Birth of Photojournalism in Germany 123

mit its employees to pose when the gamerooms were
closed. Salomon's skill consisted in making these photo
graphs so vivid that they appeared to have been taken

from life. The public could not distinguish the actual

from the imitations. The attraction of the illustrated
magazine was in printing sensational photographs. If
necessary, one fabricated them.
Kutt Korff was the editor-in-chief of the Berliner I/
[ustrirte, one of a group of newspapers owned by UlI

stein. He had begun his career as an errand boy and owed

his rise to his unerring memory and his journalistic in
stinct. One of the Ullstein brothers once asked him to
report, as soon as possible, all the facts concerning a
maritime disaster. Korff gave him all the details on the
spot, including the exact measurements of the sunken
boat. The astounded Ullstein started Korff on his quick
rise in the Ullstein publishing empire.
Stefan Lorant joined the Munchner Illustrierte Presse
as the head of the Berlin office. In 1930 he became its
editor-in-mief. Kurt Korff had invented the 'ultra-secret'
and 'unique' photographs whim occasionally required a
wiliness not always consistent with the truth. Stefan Lo
rant absolutely refused to accept any posed photographs.
Up to this point, the illustrated press had only reproduced
individual pictures. Now Lorant developed the idea of
the photostory in which a series of images would depict
one central subject. Photoreporting in these stories had
to have a beginning and an end and was defined by place,
rime, and action, just as in the classical theater. The dif
ference is that in the theater the stage keeps the audience
aware of the fictional nature of the action. The reader

poring over a magazine, on the other hand, idenrifies

what he sees in the photographs as real.

Under Lorant's influence photographers began to fill

entire pages of the magazine with groups of photographs

on a single subject. He was the first to realize that the

public not only wants to be infomIed about famous per-

124 Photography & Society

sonalities, but is also interested in subjects concerning
everyday life. Several years later, this idea was to become
a factor in the success of the American magazine Life.
From this time on, not only celebrities and historic events
were to be depicted in the illustrated magazines, but also
the life of the man in the street. The illustrated maga
zine became a symbol of the liberal spirit of the time.
A group of young photographers grew up around Salo
mon, who was forry-four in 1930. They were free-lanc
ers, independent photographers who often proposed
their own stories. Each of their photographs was signed,
indicating the artention that was now being paid to the
photographer's personaliry. Like Salomon, they were not
only photographers, but also editors of their own texts
and captions.114 The majoriry of them were middle class,
had university educations and had turned to photography
because of the economic difficnlties that Germany faced
after the War. Some of these photographers were part
of the Dephot News Service'15 (Deutscher Photodienst)
which worked closely with the illustrated magazines, and
particularly with Stefan Lorant. The Dephot News Serv
ice was a veritable treasure trove of talent, and almost
all its photographers later became famous.
Hans Baumann was one of these photographers. The
son of a banker, he was born in 1839 in Freiburg. He
began studying art, but was drafted in 1914. After sev
eral years in the army, he found himself in the same post
war quandary that faced so many other young men whose
families had lost their fortunes during the great inflation.
Forced to abandon his studies to make a living, he be
came an illustrator for the Berlin newspaper B. Z. am
Mittag in 1926, specializing in spotts events. When his
paper, like others, began to attach increasing importance
to photographs, Baumann decided to become a photog
rapher. His father had given him a camera at the age of
ten, and as a child, he had developed a passion for work
ing with it. As an art student, he had used photographs

The Birth of Photo;ournaJism in Gennany 125

to aid him in his drawings."" He met Stefan Lorant
through the Dephot News Service and began working in
1929 for the Munehner IIIustrierte Presse, using the pseu
donym of Felix H. Man in order to separate his new
career as freelance photographer from his previous pro
fession as illustrator. In 1929 he did the first photostory
on night life under the title 'Between Midnight and Dawn
on the Kurfiirstendamm' (Berlin's main boulevard). The
Munich magazine guaranteed him a minimum salary of "

1 ,000 marks a month,117 under the condition that he out

line his stories beforehand. It was an extraordinary sum
for the time, when a civil servant's salary averaged around
500 marks. Between 1929 and 1933, he completed more
than 80 photostories, including stories on public swim
ming pools, factory workers, restaurant scenes, boxing
matches, the Lunapark, and many other subjects of in
terest to the general public, who recoguized their con
cerns and their pleasures in his photographs.
Man was one of the first photojournalists to work
closely with Stefan Lorant in defining the modem for
mula for photoreporting.118 In the early thirties, Lorant
sent him to Rome to do a story on Mussolini, who until
then had only been seen in pretentious poses. Man spent a
fnli day with II Duee, from seven in the morning until ten
in the evening, and took a series of photographs that
inspired a whole generation with a taste for candid shots.
'Mussolini's office was enormous, filled with marble
columns and pillars like the entrance to a museum; Man
recalled. 'He treated his ministers rather badly . . . One
of them brought him a stack of papers including certain
lerters marked "important." Mussolini looked at the
envelopes, and if he thought a letter might be interesting,
he read it; if it didn't interest him, he tossed it in the air
and expected the minister to run and fetm it.' The story
was a sensation and brought Man 3 ,000 marks.' 19
The German illustrated magazines of the twenties car
ried many names that are famous today: MoholyNagy

12.6 Photography & Society

Hans Baumann (known by
his pseudonym Felix H.
Man) photographed Musso
lini in picrures that were
the first to show the Italian
leader in his everyday rou
tines (opposite: two pages
of Man's photographs from
Muncbner IIlu.strierte
Presse, 1931; above:
Mussolini's Workroom,
1931).
of the Bauhaus; Alfred Eisenstaedt, chief photographer
for the Associated Press in Berlin at the time; Andre
Kertesz; Martin Muncaszi; and Germaine Krull. There
were others who are not as well known today: Umbo, a
former Bauhaus student; Wolfgang Weber; Marian
Schwabik; the Gidal Brothers; and such aristocrats as
Helmut Muller von Spolinski; von Blucher; and Freiherr
von Bechmann. Each specialized in a specific area such as
sports, the theater, or political events.
In 1929, the majority of photojournalists still used the
Ermanox. At the beginning of the thirties, however, Salo
mon, Man, and others began to use the Leica, a new cam
era that radically changed photojournalism. The Leica
was invented by askar Barnack, who manufactured pre-
The Birth of Photoiournalism in Germany 12.7
 Oskat Barnacl,'s invention, t

the Leica camera, was far

more versatile and allowed
many more exposures than
its predecessors. It was not
immediately accepted as a t
professional camera I:>y pho
tographers and clients be-
cause ofits unimpressive
size, but the smaller camera
made it easier to be inoon-
spiwous and thus shoot
.1
1
difficult news stories.
t;

cision instruments of all sorts. 120 Born in 1879, he had

been interested in photography as a youth. He loved to
take long walks carrying his 7 X 9-inch camera, the dou
ble wooden film holders, and a tripod. Not baving a

strong constitution, Barnack dreamed of a camera that

could be camed in one's pocket, an idea that obsessed

him throughout the years he worked in the optical indus

try. Finally in 1 9 1 I, he became the director of the Leitz

factory research laboratories at Wetzlar, where micro

scopes and telescopes were manufactured, and at last had

the opportuniry to realize his dream. He built a small

camera using 35mm film, half the size of the photo

graphic negatives then in use, and capable of multiple

exposures. Years of research were still necessary before

the Leitz Company could manufacture the new camera.

In 1925, the Leica was finally introduced at the Leip

zig Indusrtial Fair where it was an immediate success.

Equipped with a I:3.5'50mm lens, the Leica was already
being sold in 1930 with several interchangeable lenses

that gready increased its versatiliry. The film allowed

128 Photography & Society

1
thirty-six exposures without reloading. The Leica revolu
tionized the work of the professional photographer.
Accustomed to working with single plates, most illus
trated press editors did not at first allow reporters to use
the Leica. The flash technique had been improved in re
cent years and large cameras yielded good large contact
prints. Even a magazine like Life, founded in 1936, ini
tially disapproved of the use of the Leica. Thomas Mc
Avoy, a member of the first team of Life photographers,
recounted the difficulties in having the new camera ac
cepted: 'I had brought a Leica back from a European trip.
The editor-in-chief, thinking it a toy not to be taken
seriously because of its small size, forbade me to use it.
At an official reception in Washington, I defied him and
took a whole series of photographs in front of my be
wildered colleagues with their large cameras and flashes.
Comparing my prints with theirs, the management ad
mitted that my photogtaphs were much more atmospher
ic and lively because, without the flash, 1 had caught
the guests unaware. From then on, the Leica was appreci
ated; and all the photographers followed my example.' 121
1 had a similar experience with my own first official
assigument. In 1936, Julien Cain, then director of the
Bibliotheque Nationale, asked me to photogtaph all of
the libraries in Paris for the 1937 World's Fair. When
1 arrived at the Nationale, the librarian saw my small
Leica and exclaimed: 'You can't be serious. Come back
with a real professional camera.' He threw me out, but
1 had an idea. 1 went to the flea market and bought an
old 8 x lo-inch wooden camera for about 50 francs (ten
dollars). This time the librarian was satisfied and the
camera was positioned on a cumbersome tripod. My head
buried in a black scarf, 1 pretended to adjust the setting,
although the camera did not have any plates. When 1
was left alone, 1 quietly took a whole series of photo
graphs of the old bookworms bent over their books with
my Leica. As 1 did not use the flash, 1 worked unnoticed.

The Birth of Photojournalism in Germany I2.9

My first victim was a distinguished old man with a long
white mustache, asleep and snoring peacefully; a monk
in his robe hunched over his work was my second, fol
lowed by others. The literary pavilion at the World's Fair
used many of my photographs, and the story on the Bib
liotheque Nationale appeared in the 463rd issue of Vu
magazine on 2.7 January 1937, entitled: 'An important
photostory by Vu at the Bibliotheque Nationale, the
world's leading intellectual factory.'
Production figures show how rapidly the Leica took
over the market. In 1 9 2.7, the company put out 1 ,000
cameras; 10,000 in 1928; 50,000 in 193 I and 100,000
in 1933. Today its production has reached more than a
million. Constantly improved, the Leica has made the
Leitz company famous all over the world. As a result,
the camera is copied almost everywhere. Since the Second
,
World War, Japanese companies in particular have be
come lively competitors of the Leica.
Founded in Wetzlar in 1848, the German Leitz com
pany is a family business now in its fourth generation.
Leitz produces more than 6,000 high precision instru
ments made up of 70,000 different parts. Technicians
are highly specialized and well paid. In 1972. the com
pany realized that manufacturing the Leica body, which
alone involved more than 700 parts, was no longer
profitable, since its retail price was no higher than the
manufacturing costs. The Leitz company became asso

ciated with the Japanese company Minolta, and Leica

bodies are now made inexpensively in Japan because of
the low wages and mechanized production. Leitz has also
worked out an agreement with Advanced Metals Re
search Corporation in Bedford, Massachusetts; and it
has signed a contract with the Swiss company Wild/Heer

burgg for the manufacture of electron microscopes. 122

In 1974 the owners of the Leitz company were forced to
dispose of 5 I percent of their stock, thus losing control
of the business to the Swiss finn of Schmidheini, which in

1 3 0 Photography & Society

 tum is part of a powerful trust. Today family businesses,
however large, are often doomed to failure unless they
become part of mnltinational enterprises.
The new democratic spirit embodied in the German
illustrated press reached a brutal end with Hitler's rise
to power. Germany had hardly begun its recovery when
the Depression began in the United States. The New York
stock market crash on Black Friday in October 1929
seriously affected the large American capital investments
in Germany. Unemployment in Germany during the fol-
lowing years increased so dramatically that in 1932 near
ly six million people were out of work. Their poverty
was one of the decisive factors in Hitler's rise to power.
As a result of pressing economic problems, political life
became so radically polarized that all parties, particularly
the Nazis and the Communists, included paramilitary
organizations. Chancellor Bruning governed by emer
gency decrees alone, and virtually ruled without the pow
erless Parliament. On 30 January 1933, Hindenburg,
president of the Reich, asked Hitler, who had just become
chancellor, to form a new government. In Berlin, the S.A.
staged their famous public burning of books by the best
known writers, and Germany was plunged into a period
of 'night and fog.' Thousands of members of the artistic
and intellectual elite went into exile. Those unable to save
themselves in time were arrested and sent to concentra
tion camps.
r The press was muzzled. Anyone suspected of doubting
the ideas of the Third Reich was dismissed, along with
those who could not prove that they were of pure Aryan
blood. The editors of major magazines were all replaced.
Kurt Korff fled to Austria and later to America. Stefan
, Lorant was imprisoned. He was released a few months
i"- later, but only after he could prove his Hungarian back
ground. Lorant fled to England where he founded IIIus
trated Weekly and later, in 1938, Picture Post, both of
which were enormously successful. With his wife and

The Birth of Photoiournalism in Germany 13 I

two sons, Dr. Erich Salomon fled to Holland where he
had relatives. A Jew, he and one of his sons were mur
dered at Auschwitz ten years later. Almost all the mem
bers of the Dephot News Service left. Felix H. Man, an
avid democrat who happened to be abroad at the time of
Hitler's rise to power, never returned to Germany. He
became Lorant's colleague in England along with Kurt
Hubschmann, who changed his name to Hurton. Ina
Bandy worked for the magazine Vu in Paris. Alfred Eisen
staedt and Fritz Goro settled in America, where they be
came staff photographers for Life. Andrei Friedmann,
who had begun his career as a photographer with the
Dephot News Service at seventeen, went to France where

1 3 2 Photography & Society

Lucien Aigner used a Leica
to catch Hitlers lazy re-
sponse to the salutes of the
athletes' parade at the 1936
Winter Olympics in Gar-
misch Partenkirchen, Ger-
many. Thinking Hitler
would appear as a blur in
the photo, Aigner did not
print the negativeunrilyears
later, many years after Hit-
ler had driven some of Ger-
many's best photographers
from the country.
he took the pseudonym Capa -a name that would soon
become famous.'23 He lOun
C ded Magnum in 1 947 All the
creators of modem photojournalism in Germany spread
their ideas abroad, exerting a decisive influence on the
'11ustrated press In
' France, EngI and, and the United States.
1
, Chosen for their loyalry to the Third Reich, the new
', editors of German magazines were permitted to publish
' only photographs that were sent to them by o
fficial or
i
gans. The most powerful figure in the new illustrated
: press was Heinrich Hoffmann, who had been born in 1885
!' at Furth near Darmstadt, where his family owned a pho-
Co tography business. In 1908, at the age of twenry-three,
he set up his own business as a photographer in Munich.
Early in 1919, a revolutionary movement proclaiming a
Sovict republic broke out in Bavaria, but was suppressed
by the Reichswehr in a bloody battle. One of the revolu
rionary leaders was assassinated and others fled. During
these months of civil war in Munich, Heinrich Hoffmann
took many photographs that he sold to newspapers all
over the world for large sums of money. Toward the end
of 1919, when Hitler's newly founded parry was made up
of only half a dozen followers, the powerful Hearst news
papers offered Hoffmann $ 5 ,000 to obtain photographs
of Hitler. Hoffmann joined the Nazi party in order to get
these photographs. He became one of Hitler's most inti
mate friends, won his absolute confidence, and was
allowed to photograph the FUhrer in all sorts of poses.
Hitler studied Hoffmann's pictures to determine the most
advantageous movements and gestures for his speeches.,
When he came to power in 1933, Hitler gave Hoffmann,
his early companion, the exclusive right to publish
photographs of him. That same year Hoffmann was
named a member of the Reichstag and in 1938 he received
the title 'Herr Professor.' An astute businessman, Hoff
mann exploited his exclusive rights to the utmost by
creating a press service, forming a publishing house for
Nazi propaganda, and surrounding himself with a staff
The Birth of Photo;ournalism in Germany 133
of photographers who were alone authorized to take
pictures of Hitler and of official events. All photographs
for the illustrated journals had to pass Hoffmann's in
spection-even those intended for the rest of the world.
He made an immense fortune, bought a great deal of
property, acquired a collection of paintings, and married
his daughter to the FUhrer of the German youth move
ment, Baldur von Schirach.
When the war broke out, Hoffmann organized a central
photographic bureau in Berlin where all photographs tak
en at the front were sent for approval. He selected only
those he deemed most appropriate for German propagan
da. His bureau was a veritable factory, processing copy
prints for the entire world press. Only he could collect
the reproduction fees.
Duringthe American occupation of Bavaria, the Ameri
can army confiscated Hoffmann's archives and used them
to identify war criminals. In 1946, at the time of the Ger
man war trials, Hoffmann was arrested and condemned
as a proven profiteer of the Third Reich. He was given
the maximum penalty of ten years at hard labor and the
loss of his entire fortune. On 25 June 1948, the decision
was reversed by another court, and his sentence was re
duced to three years in a work camp. This decision was
overturned on another technicality. The office ofthe direc
tor of public prosecution in Munich increased Hoff
mann's sentence once more, to five years, but released
him in recognirion oftime served. Hoffmann was stripped
of reproduction rights to his photographic archives for a
ten-year period and lost his title of 'Herr Professor.' Out
of his immense fortune he was allowed to keep only
5,000 marks for the support of his family. Eventually
another court ruled that his name should be struck from
the list of war criminals, on the grounds that he had
only been an instrument of Hitler's policies. In 1957,
all proceedings against him were dropped. Hoffmann died
at the end of that year, at the age of seventy-rwo.'24 Un-

134 Photography & Society

Heinrich HoHmann and his
photographs helped Hitler
establish an image that the
world would not forget.
Hoffmann had exclusive
rights to publish pictUres of
Hitler and profited greatly
from that right throughout
the regime's existence.
doubtedly, he was one of the Nazis who had profited
most from the Hitler regime.
In 1947, part of Hoffmann's confiscated archives was
transferred to the National Archives in Washington. In
the early sixties his son and heir, also named Heinrich,
who remembers having sat on Hitler's lap as a child of
three, won his suit to regain the reproduction rights to
his father's photographic collection. Hoffmann fils now
owns the negatives that news services around the world
profited from for so many years.
The liberal-spirited German magazines that flourished
under the Weimar Republic were emulated elsewhere in
Europe. The French magazine Vu was founded in 1928
by Lucien Vogel ( 1 886-1954), editor, journalist, printer,
and talented designer. In 1906 he joined the art depart
ment of Femina magazine. Several years later he became
the director of Art et Decoration. In 1 9 1 2 he founded
la Gazette du Bon Ton and Ie Jardin des Modes.
Lucien Vogel was a man of strong personality and very
original ideas. He was affable, with bright blue eyes that
reflected his great generosity and his resolute character.
His fashion magazines carried the imprint of his refined
Parisian taste and his liberal outlook. Starting with the
first issue of Vu, he broke away from the use of the single
photographs that had appeared for many years in Illus
tration, one of the oldest French magazines. Vogel sur
rounded himself with first-rate colleagnes, capable writ
ers and journalists such as Philippe Soupault, whom he
sent to Germany, or Madeleine Jacob, who had begun
as a secretary on the editorial staff and was later sent
as special correspondent to Austria. Ida Treat, an Ameri
can, was his correspondent in Asia. He used the best
photographers of the period, among them Germaine
Krull, Andre Kertesz, Laure Albin-Guillot, Muncaszi,
Lucien Aigner, Felix Harman, and Capa, whose celebrat-
The Birth of PbotoioumaJjsm in Germany 13 5


ed picture of a Spanish Republican soldier falling under

gunfire was first published in Vu in I 9 3 6 .
The first issue of Vu appeared on 28 March I 928,
with Vogel's statement of intent: 'Conceived in a new
spirit and executed by new means, Vu brings a new for
mula to France: illustrated reporting on world events .
. . . From any place where important events occur, pho
tographs, dispatches, and articles will reach Vu linking
our readership with the entire world . . . and bringing
the universality of life to the eye . . . pages packed with
photographs translating foreign and domestic political
events into images . . . sensationally illustrated photo
stories . . . travel stories, analyses of causes cei'ebres . . .
the most recent discoveries, carefully selected photo
graphs . . . .'

136 Photography & Society

Lucien Vogel attracted tal
ented photographers such
as Raben Capa, Germaine
Krull, and Andre Kertesz to
his Vu, founded in 1928
after the model of the pre
Hitler German photomag
azine. Intended as a vehicle
for eye-opening ne'"-"S paired
with numerous photo
graphs (oftentimes as many
as four to a page), \'u lasted
only a decade due to Vogel's
unpopular politics and his
successors' inability to
maintain the editorial and
reproduction quality of the
early \'u, tViO indications
that the magazine depended
more on its audience than
on its advertisers for sup
port (left: Capa, Death of a
Spanish Soldier, 1 9 :; 6 ;
right: Gennaine Krull, Un
titled; page 1 3 8 : Andre Ker
tesz, Park in the Snow,
1928).

The Birth of Photojournalism in Germany 137

 t

138 PhotoK'aphy & Sodety

Andre Kertesz, Park in the The first issue contained more than 60 photographs
Snow. 1928. and sold for 1 . 5 francs. Starting in 193 1, Vogel produced
special issues presenting perceptive and courageous anal
yses of world events. Views ofSoviet Russia and America
Fights (dedicated to Roosevelt's New Deal) appeared in
193 I. The April 1932 issue on The German Enigma car
ried 438 photographs in 1 2 5 pages. For the first time,
the French public was warned against Nazism. A special
issue on Italy, The Eleventh Year of Fascism, appeared
in 1933, and Examination of China in May 1934. But
the tone and subject matter of Vu (Vogel was simultane
ously editing Lu, a kind of press digest) did not please
its Swiss financial backers and failed to attract enough
advertising, the financial backbone of magazines in a
capitalist society. He alienated the large industries that
might have bought advertising space by his undisguised
support for the Left which, united in the Popular Front,
had just won the 1936 election. At last the appearance
of his special issue on the Spanish Civil War in the fall
of 1936, supporting the Republican point ofview, utterly
outraged Vu's backers and Vogel was forced to resigu.
The magazine continued until 1938, but its quality
dropped, and most of its readers drifted away.
When Lucien Vogel died in 1954, stricken at his desk,
Henry Luce cabled Vogel's family: 'Without Vu, Life
would never have been created.' The ultimate tribute was
thus paid to the man who had founded the first modem
photographically illustrated magazine in France.

The Birth of Photo;ournalism in Germany 139



Tl' " " , " r.'

LIFE BEGINS
.. ,,' I". I . , I, C'"
..,"'!.1 1- ",-.l , . " . 1 ",,,,,,,,,,1 '"

"-_' M " 'H ,,_ .".,,1 ;..,,.I. \ .." ",..I . , , ,' , I , , ' " ,_,
,j. " ,,,1.,;,, .1 ,-.I 'I"".,i, ,,1,.-,. 'I" ,,,.1 .,,, ,,,:,I ! . , ' .t I'
,""I " , ._ lh' " "hi I"".... l,,, .",,1 _Ltd..-.

1'_ '; . ". , .

1,-.,,.., I,.I '",1,- .." 11,, "",,.... ,,. ',.'I, ,,, ,"
, ,-I " " 1 _ ' .'
I.,;:.., It. )" .'W''' ....,._ 1.,,,1.,. l". . . ....,! ,'I, I

140 Photography & Society


'Life begins': the caption
beneath this opening photo
of the first issue of Life mag
azine (November 2.3. I936)
read: 'The camera records
the most vital moment in
any life: Its beginning.' A
photomagazine after the
Gennan and Vu model, Life
would succeed not only be
cause of its photographs but
also because of an advertis
ing network that spanned
the country. Life continued
to survive until television
took over the advertising
market in the late I9605.
American Mass Media Magazines
Three years after Hitler's takeover and the subsequent
muzzling of the entire German press, a new illustrated
magazine appeared in America that would become the
most celebrated of its kind throughout the world. The
first issue of Life magazine appeared on 23 November
I936, with an initial printing of 466,000 copies. Circula
tion reached one million a year later, and more than eight
million by I972. Its success was unique and its format
imitated almost everywhere.
Life was not the first American magazine illustrated
entirely with photographs. In I896, the New York Times
had begun to publish a weekly photographic supplement,
and other newspapers had followed its example. Mid
Week Pictorial, Panorama, and Parade had all appeared,
but none had Life's success.
The idea itself was not new. Its realization was the
result of many influences, the development of the cinema
being the foremost. From the beginning of the twentieth
century, film had gone beyond the vaudeville stage and
had begun to attract millions of spectators to movie the
aters daily. Photographic images were becoming familiar
to the public and were beginning to shape its vision. The
new style in photojournalism, that began with the Ger
man illustrated magazines of the early thirties and was
taken up later by the French magazine Vu, profoundly
influenced Life's creators in their decision to illustrate
stories with groups of photographs. Photographs by Dr.
Salomon and Felix H. Man had already appeared in
American magazines and become well known. Life hired
many of the excellent photographers who fled Hitler and
consulted former contributors to the German illustrated
press such as Korff and Szanfranski, both of whom had
been with the Berliner Il/ustrirte. Finally, technical devel
opments in photography, new monochrome printing and
color processes, and the invention of the teleprinter for

the rapid transmission of photographs all played impor

tant roles in the creation of the new photographic maga

zine. But the most crucial factor in its success was its
modem advertising system.

Nearly all American magazines are entirely financed

by advertising. Their profits depend on it. The advertis

ing empire in America grew out of the shift from an agri

cultural to an industrial economy. As new industries

grew, consumer goods were standardized and manufac

tured in large quantities. The expansion of highways and
railroads brought producers and consumets closer to
gether. Because the country is so large, there were few
national newspapers. Each region has its own daily pa
pers, specializing in local news. Weekly or monthly mag
azines, on the other hand, can be distributed throughout
the country and are easily available to everyone. National
corporations began to place their ads in magazines.
Between 1939 and 1952, the number of advertisers

grew from 936 to :',538, and the number of products

advertised jumped ftom 1,659 to 4,47:..125 Magazines

were profoundly affected. Until the end of the nineteenth

century, publishers had had complete control over the

content of their magazines. As America increasingly be

came a society of consumers, the powerful economic in
centive of advertising forced changes in the publishers'
role. From the time advertising became their major source

ofprofit, publishers were no longer interested in the reader

as reader, but in the reader as consumer. Periodicals

no longer simply published stoties and illustrations. They

became promoters of advertising copy and magazines

became an integral part of the American marketing

system.126

14:' Photography & Society

 Since advertising rates depended on circulation, pub
lishers were concerned with increasing their profits by
increasing their circulation. They sought to make their
magazines attractive to the majotiry of reader/consumers.
With the advent of television these factors also changed;
but we shall discuss that development later.
During the sixties, fourteen out of every 100 advertis
ing dollars invested in American magazines went to Life,
which was read by approximately 40 million Americans.
Life was founded by Henry R. Luce, who had been born
in China in 1898, the son of a Presbyterian minister.
Luce's puritanical, Calvinist education, the austeriry of
his upbringing, and his later studies at Yale all combined
to make him a staunch conservative. His ideas were re
flected in all his publications. From its poor beginnings
his life drastically changed in a few decades. He became
one of America's press lords, a transformation in the
purest tradition of liberal American sociery during the
first third of the century. l27
Luce and his Yale classmate Britton Hadden founded
lime, Inc. in 1929. The name 'lime' occurred to him
one evening while reading a subway ad. The young found
ers, in their twenties at the time, realized that there was
no magazine adapted to the fast pace of contemporary
work life. Most people had little time to keep up with
current events. Their idea was to create a magazine that
would summarize the events of the previous week. Its
beginning was modest. They had trouble finding the
$85,000 they needed to publish their first issue in March
1923. Since the magazine did not yet have its own news
network from which to draw, stories in the first issues
were taken from the New York Times and rewritten in a
special sryle. This was possible at the time because the
U.S. Supreme Court had recently ruled that news that
had been public for more than twenry-four hours had
entered the public domain.12
Time was an enormous SllCcesS, and when Life ap-

American Mass Media Magazines 143

peared in 1936, it was organized along the same lines.
The editorial staff was divided into seventeen depart
ments: domestic news, music, books, nature, sports, sci

eoee,.fashion, feature articles, editorials, and so on. These

departments were further subdivided: movies and the

ater, for example, were grouped under entertainment;

art and religion under culture. Each department was

headed by an editor and a researcher, to whom other as

sistant editors and researchers reported. While all the

researchers were women, the writers wefe generally cho

sen from among young male university graduates, espe
cially from Luce's alma mater, Yale. Members of each
department submitted a weekly report in which planned
and finished stories were listed. The stories were then
placed in the 'bank' (i.e., held in reserve), in many cases
to be published much later or perhaps not at all. The
editor-in-chief sent the most important feature stories to
the printer and, with these selections in mind, chose the
rest of the material for the week. If the feature news
article seemed a bit long or heavy, he looked for lighter
subjects to fill the remaining space and balance the issue.
Other departments then got the chance to take stories out
of the 'deep freeze' of their 'bank' and possibly see one
published. These decisions were often made in the final
hours before the magazine went to press.
The news department was responsible for assembling
news clippings that might lead to a stoty and for send
ing these on to the proper departments. The researchers
then forwarded these press clippings to the national or
international news bureau chiefs who, if the subject
seemed important, immediately wired them to Life cor
respondents around the world. When information on a
particular subject was needed, researchers used the
'morgue,' where all press clippings and information on
many subjects were filed.12'
The head of the photography department dealt with
all Life photographers and acted as liaison between them

144 Photography & Society

 and the editorial departments. In addirion to distributing
assignments, he was responsible for planning their work
and travels and had the right to hire and fire. His posi
tion within the magazine depended on his ability to elicit
the utmost from his photographers. He had to be a good
psychologist to be able to handle photographers, who are
often touchy or anxious about their difficult tasks. Press
photographers work under difficult and ttying circum
stances and are always pressed for time. They must have
iron constitutions, a good deal of courage, and qnick
reflexes to be able to adapt to all kinds of situations.
Their lives are often in danger, and many have paid for
their boldness with their lives. They deal with people
from all classes, and must know how to behave with
equal ease at a royal court or with a primitive tribe. Re
lations berween the head of Life's photography depart
ment and his photographers were not always smooth.
While they were in the field, often struggling with dif
ficulties that seemed insurmountable, he issued orders
from his office.
__ Perhaps the most influential head of Life's photogra
phy department was Wilson Hicks, who held the position
for thirteen years, from 1937 to 1950, during which time
he groomed a whole generation of photographers, many
of whom became famous. He was often unpopular with
them because of his brusque carrot-and-stick manner;
but those who worked with him had the deepest respect
for his knowledge of photojournalism and for his rich
imagination. 130
When a stoty was to be used, the photographs were
sent to the art director for page layout and to an editor,
who had to write the text in an exact number of words.
He composed it on special yellow paper calibrated for
the exact number of letter-spaces and lines that fit the
predetermined text lengrh. Researchers checked out evety
word and marked a red spot above each as it was veri
fied. Copies of the article were then sent to a special of-

l
American Mass Media Magazines 145
fice where the contents were again checked by Life spe
cialists: historians, doctors, psychologists, educators, and
others. In addition to staff photographers, Life also used

photographic agencies and &ee-lancers.

What made Life's great success possible was the enor

mous organization of lime, Inc. The corporation includ

ed all of Luce's enterprises and was further expanded

during the Second World War, when lime-Life Interna

tional was founded with nearly 360 offices around the

world, staffed by 6,700 people.

Henry R. Luce began his journalistic career in I92I as
a reporter for the Chicago News with a salary of $16 a
week. In I967, from his office on the thirty-fourth floor
of New York's Rockefeller Center, Luce controlled a vast
empire of businesses and publications that figured among
America's 500 largest industries. More than 3 million
copies of Time were printed weekly by then, and more
than 8 million copies of Life. Luce also owned SPOTts
Illustrated and Fortune, a magazine exclusively for busi
nessmen, both totaling over I3 million in circulation. In
addition he owned a book publishing department, with
annual sales around I7 million, five radio stations, six
television stations, paper factories, forests, and oil wells
in Texas. lime, Inc. earned more than $I5 million an
nually, and Luce's personal yearly income was more than
$1.25 million. When he died suddenly in I967 at the age
of sixty-nine, he was at the height of his success. III
GO see life; to see the world, to eyewitness great events;
to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the
proud; to see strange things-machines, armies, multi
tudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see
man's work-his paintings, towers and discoveries, to see
things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind

walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to;

the women that men love and many children; to see and

to take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to s

and be instructed.' With these words, Henry R. Lu ';..-l

I46 Photography & Society


Like Vu, Life attracted some
of the world's most talented
and most famous photogra
phers: Margaret Rourke
White's Fort Peck Dam,
Montana, 1936 (top) ap
peared on the front cover of
Life's first issue and Peter
Stackpole's Golden Gate
Bridge, c. 1935 (bottom),
appeared during the first
year.
had introduced the first issue of Life.'32 It was made
up of ninety-six pages, one-third devoted to advertising.
The cover photograph was by Margaret Bourke-White.
Along with Alfred Eisenstaedt, Thomas McAvoy, and
Peter Stackpole, she was part of the team of photojour
nalists employed by the magazine. The cover photograph
showing Fort Peck Dam in Montana introduced the fea
ture stoty of the issue: nine pages on the New Deal's
work relief program at Fort Peck. Not long after, Henty
Luce became one of the New Deal's most bitter opponents
and used his magazine to fight its policies.
A single photograph filled the first page-a newly born
child held by an obstetrician, with the caption: 'Life be
gins,' a pun introducing the first issue. The caption con
tinued: The camera records the most vital moment in
life: its beginning.' Two pages on Chinese schoolchildren
in San Francisco followed, after which there were photo
graphs of Franklin Roosevelt. Four pages (three in color)
on a popular painter named Curty came after the Presi
dent, then four pages (one in color) on the 'greatest liv
ing actress; Helen Hayes, and two pages on Rockefeller
Center and its radio station. There were also five pages
devoted to Brazil, four to movie star Robert Taylor, one
page on Saralt Bernhardt, and two on a new world weath
er map. One page showed a one-legged man climbing a
steep ridge in the mountains. Then there were two pages
on Russian life, followed by two pages on the black
widow spider, and finally a section entitled 'Life goes to a
party,' which showed photographs of French aristocrats
at a garden party.
The first issue set the tone for Life. Months of work
had gone into deciding what would please the greatest
number of readers throughout the United States, what
would awaken their curiosity and touch on their emo
tional preoccupations and dreams of success. Life want
ed to be understood by all, to be a magazine read by the
entire family, and to popularize the sciences and arts.
American Mass Media Magazines 147
It carried such features as A Look at the World's Week
and the memoirs of such celebrities as the Duke of Wind
sor.The work of great writers, including Hemingway's
The Old Man and the Sea, as well as essays on the world's
great religions, would also be published there.

'I am a Presbyterian, a Republican and a capitalist.

I am biased in favor of God, the Republican parry and
.!
Free Enterprise....Hadden and I invented Time. There
fore we had a right to say what it would be. We're not

fooling anybody. Our readers know where we stand.

We're telling the story to the best of our knowledge and
belief.' 133 Henry Luce's knowledge and beliefs corre
sponded to the ideas of the small class of imporrant cap
italists who controlled America's destiny.Luce never hid
his ideas.As he willingly admitted, Life was created first
to make profits and then to help the political programs
which he thought best. Like his Presbyterian forebears,
he, too, wanted to educate the masses. His magazine's
success was based on thorough study of mass psychol
ogy. Man is above all interested in himself: any human
and social condition affecting his own life will move him.
When conditions are miserable, he must be given the
hope of a better future.From such reasoning flowed the
nine pages on the New Deal program in Montana, which
promised work for a large group of poverry-stricken peo
ple.1)te pictures of children struck a sentimental chord,
while the photographs of the President symbolized the
father-protector. The lives of actresses and movie stars
showed that talent would always be rewarded; and the
Lifereader was taught that science performs miracles.
The adventures of a one-legged man responded to the
need for sensation; the photographs of Brazil, to the taste
for the exotic.Finally, the garden parry photographs of
aristocrats brought the lives of the elite into everyone's
home.
The world reflected in Life was full of light and had
only a few shadows. It was ultimately a false world, one

148 Photography & Society

 that inspired the masses with false hopes. It is equally
true, however, that Life popularized the arts aod sciences,
opened windows onto hidden worlds, and in irs own
special way educated the masses. It contributed to the
public's acquaintaoce with art, spending more thao $30
million on color art reproductions. Luce was a fervent
patriot, and in his magazines nationalism played a central
role. The vast majority of other magazines in America
were created with the same point of view, but what gave
Life's famous photographer so mU $ credibility to Life was irs extensive use of photo
catches Life's famous war graphsl]9 the average man photography, which is the
correspondent at a pensive exact reproduction of reality, cannot lie. Few people
moment: Alfred Eisen
staedt's Ernie Pyle. the realize that the meaoing of a photograph can be chaoged
C.l.'s Favorite War Re completely by the accompanying caption, by its juxta
porter (1944). position with other photographs, or by the maoner in
which people aod evenrs are photographed. We shall
discuss this point later. 1
r The popularity of tIrIS' new journalism based almost
usively on photographs grew out of the changes that
had taken place in the condition of modern man aod the
tendency toward greater standardization of modern life.
As the individual became less important to society, his
need to affirm himself as an individual became greate ')
For example, the enormous success of war correspondent
Ernie Pyle's stories from the front lay in the fact that
instead of describing the lives of GIs in general, he wrote
about what happened to Bob Smith from Brownsville,
Texas, or to Jim Brown from Nashville, Tennessee. Mil
lions of readers had the moral satisfacrion of being able
to identify the fates of their own brothers, husbaods,
or sons with those of the GIs described by Pyle. Read
ers could visualize their loved ones among the mass of
aoonymous soldiers because the characters in Pyle's sto
ries were specific people they could imagine knowing.
The success of the illustrated weeklies is based on the
same phenomenon. In addition to current events, they
present stories about ordinary people whose names are

Amenam Mass Media Magazines 149

always mentioned. As the relations among men became
more dehumanized, the journalist tended to give the in
dividual an artificial importance.
Life was enormously successful and was read by the
masses. It was a family magazine that refused to pub
lish anything shocking. But toward the end of the sixties,
Life, Look, Holiday, and other general-interest maga
zines were having problems. Of all the lime, Inc. proper

ties, Life had been the most profitable. Now it began
to lose money. One of the causes was inflation. The price
of everything needed to produce a magazine had risen
considerably. In 1971 it was estimated that expenses had
increased 35 percent over the previous year. The owners

of large American magazines were forced to take drastic

measures. Life shut down offices in America and abroad,

reduced the number of its staff, and terminated the un

profitable Spanish edition. Soon the international edition

also folded.
Previously, Life had maintained a 'blanket coverage'

policy under which the most detailed research possible

was carried out on each subjecr by as many as twenty

journalists and photographers who were sent wherever

necessary. Here is an example of Life's methods of assur

ing complete coverage of an exclusive story:

On Monday, 5 February 1965, 65 million Americans (at
the time Life was printing around seven million copies) were
offered twenty-two-and-a-half pages, twenty in color. on
Wmston Churchill's funeral. The story required seventeen
photographers, more than forty journalists and technicians,
a dozen motorcyclists, two helicopters, and one DC-S. Two

years earlier, a researcher had drawn up a highly confidential
list of all that was to happen upon the death of Wmston

Churchill-the nature and location of the ceremony, the
parade route, the site of the tomb, and the day of the funeral,

which had a 90 percent chance of falling on a Saturday.'A list
was prepared of private rooms in which Life photographers

could work in total secrecy. As soon as Churchill feU ill, the

150 Photography & Society

l
Ufe"s 'blanket coverage' of
stories such as Wmston
Churdilll's funernl (pages
15>-153) Iccpt the magazine
afloat and popular with
readc;rs. despite the compe
tition with lV. Life faltered
not because it declined in
popularity but because the
advertisers who financed
the magazine switched to
1V to reach a larger audi
ence.
rooms were rented. Life ordinarily appeared on Mondays,
putting the issue to bed on the previous Wednesday evening.
Special arrnngements were made to hold off prinring the
Churchill issue until Saturday night, and to provide for dis
tribution by air rather than by surface mail. There was
nothing else left to do but to wait for the old lion to die.
As predicted, the burial took place on Saturday. Every pho
tographer was in his place. The films were to be picked up at
five points-Westminster Hall, Saint Paul's, Trafalgar Square,
a wharf on the Thames, and Blandon, where the burial took
place. Fifteen days earlier, rooms in three houses with win
dows overlooking the cemetery had been rented, and three
photographers were on location forry-eight hours before the
announcement came that photographs of the burial itself
were forbidden. (Life did not publish these photographs.)
Motorcyclists carried the films to the airpon, where the spe
cially rented airplane was waiting. Its interior had been
transformed into an editing room with typewriters and ta
bles. A comfortable laboratory was installed in the front of
the plane, and hooked up to a special electrical system. A
very large table had also been set up to display the photo
graphs for page layout, and light boxes were ready for exam
ining the developed color slides. Finally, there was a small
reference library for correspondents, containing the ten vol
umes of Churchill's works.
The airplane left New York the day before the ftmeral with
40 members of the editorial staff on board, among them the
six specialists who would develop the 70 rolls of color film.
It took the airplane slightly more than eight hours to cross
the 8,500 miles between London and Chicago, where the
Life printing plant was located. Selected documents, page
layouts, and the accompanying detailed captions were pre
pared during the trip. In order to avoid the winds that could
have caused a delay, the airplane headed north and flew just
below the Arctic Circle. Page after page was prepared. When
Lake Michigan, with Chicago on its banks, appeared, the
work was finished.l34
American Mass Media Magazines IS I
 THE PROCESSION MARCHES
THROUGH HISTORY HE HAD MADE
by ALAN
MOOREHEAO
H
THEN TO BLADON
 The coverage cost about $250,000. 'Our readers are
first to benefit,' wrote the publisher. 'The story has
shown that all the parts of the chain linking the event
to the reader held up. We have scored a point against
television.' Competition with television was already be
ginning to haunt Life's publishers at the beginning of
1965. Several years later, it had become a serious prob
lem, forcing them to reduce their staff considerably.
In the hope of making the magazine profitable once again
they experimented with various changes. More emphasis
was placed on the text, for example. PhotogIaphic stories
designed for twelve-page coverage were cut in half. On
one occasion Life even strayed from its customary moral
code by pUblishing reports on the Mafia and corruption,
in order 'to please young readers.' But most readers pro
tested vigorously, and this kind of yellow journalism was
abandoned.
The crisis seems incomprehensible in view of Life's ex
traordinary success with the public. At its peak, there
were close to 8.6 million subscribers, a number never
achieved by any other illustrated magazine. Too many
subscribers, however, are not an asset, especially in in
flationary times. Postal expenses increased 170 percent in
five years, while advertising contracts, negotiated for
relatively long periods of time and providing sustained
revenues, were frozen. Advertisers, moreover, had lost
confidence.
In 1966, Life had sold 3,300 pages of advertising for
close to 170 million dollars. Two years later it sold only
2,761 pages for about $154 million, reflecting a loss of
sixteen percent. In 1969, the deficit glew to $10 ntillion,
and losses conrinued in the following years.IlS On 3I
October 1970, the New York Times reported that Time,
Inc. had sold eleven local radio and television stations for
$80.1 ntillion. The report pointed out that the sellers,
surprisingly enougiI, were getting rid of profitable busi
nesses to keep others, like Life, that were losing money.

154 Photography & Society

The managers of TIme, Inc. had not lost hope that the
magazine would once again show a profit.136
In 1970 a four-color full-page ad in Life cost $64,000
and reached a readership of 40 million. For the same
amount of money, an advertiser could buy one minute of
television time on one of the most popular programs, for
example Laugh-In, reaching 50 million viewers.
On 9 December 1972, a front-page headline in the
International Herald Tribune read, 'Life magazine dead
at 36.' TIme Inc. had finally decided to terminate publica
tion, much to the surprise of the enrire world press. Every
newspaper, television, and radio station reported the end
of the most important illustrated weekly. The last issue
came out on 28 December 1972. The death of Life sig
naled the end of a whole period of photojournalism. At
the New York Stock Exchange, the sudden rise of TIme
Inc. stock indicated that the large American publishing
conglomerate had regained the confidence of investors
by ridding itself of Life's deficits.
Since its beginnings in the 1940s, television had made
immense progress, becoming a formidable rival to maga
zines. In 1949, there were 69 stations in America; by
1970, more than 800. The French newspaper Le Monde
recently published statistics indicating that every French
man between the ages of two and sixty-five will spend
eigiIt years of his life in front of a television set. The image
on the small screen, however fleeting, does communicate
the news, often at the very moment that events occur.
Life, on the other hand, appeared ouly once a week,
filling out news and political events already known to
millions of television viewers. The only magazines un
affected by this crisis were the higiIly specialized ones like
those financed by drug companies and read by doctors.
Women's magazines, pornography, and magazines cater
ing to regional interests are among the few independent
magazines that can hold their readerships today. Special
ized magazines which provide depth coverage suffered

American Mass Media Magazines 155

 ,1

less competition from television. The lime Inc. managers

accordingly decided to consider several possible maga
zines specializing in the areas of health, vacations, food,
film, money, and children. The first of these magazines,
Money, appeared in October 1972.
In April 1972, when the managers of lime Inc., Hed
ley Donovan and Andrew Heiskell, announced the new
monthly magazine to the press, they pointed out that
most people did not know how to manage their finances.
In his statement to the stockholders, Donovan declared
that 'Money will not make you rich, no magazine of
conscience can promise that. But a reading of successive
issues should help the reader to gain a greater measure
of control over his personal finances . . . . Money will be
gin with a minimum national circulation of 225,000
copies, mostly in prepaid subscriptions. . . .' 137
Using the same format as Time, Money appeared con
taining 104 pages, 48 of which were devoted to advertis
ing. Readers in the United States had been accustomed to
low prices for magazines. 'Departing from traditional
consumer magazine economics, we are asking our read
ers to pay a substantial share of the magazine's costs,'
the stockholders were told. They hoped this would allow
them a cenain financial independence from advertising.
In the early seventies, inflation began to reach Europe,
where illustrated magazines were hit hard for the same
reasons as those in America. In Europe, too, television
had become a threat despite the restrictions on TV ad
vertising in France and in other countries where televi
sion is a nationalized industry. In 1956 Paris-Match, the
largest French illustrated magazine, was printing 1.8 mil
lion copies. In 1967, its circulation had dropped to
1,382.,000, and in April 1972, its printing was no more
than 810,72.2.. 138
For many years, Paris-Match, Le Figaro, Tel" Sept
Jours, Marie-Claire, Parents, and radio Luxembourg all
belonged to the textile magnate Jean Prouvost. He sug-

1 5 6 Photography & Society

gested a change in formula to help save Paris-Match,
whose goal had always been to imitate Life. During this
crisis Prouvost turned once again to America, and invited
the graphic designer of the immensely successful New
York Magazine (founded in 1968) to come to his aid.
The size of Paris-Match was slightly reduced; photo
graphs now filled no more than 50 percent of the maga
zine, and the text was expanded to include new sections
written expressly for the French. Articles were written
on technical and scientific innovations that would affect
French life. The pages devoted to Patis gossip were also
increased. Paris-Match began to cover such sensational
stories as the scandal involving the publication of nude
photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, or the his
tory of Playboy. Its price was raised but according to the
editors, the sale of these first revamped issues also in
creased. The former Life team, however, was skeptical.
They, too, had tried in vain to save their magazine by
introducing new formats. The success of an illustrated
magazine remained problematic because the public had
lost interest not only in this kind of magazine but in
the press in general. As the pace of life quickens, the
time for reading diminishes. According to official statis
tics, 85 percent of the French population keeps up with
the news through government radio and television broad
casts, or through radio programming from ou de W
France, which is also regulated by the governmendlhe
mass media, while claiming to be objective, in reality
are managed by people who are constantly censored or
forced to censor themselves. News broadcasts on nation
al television or radio networks are bound to manipulate
public opinion in the name of those in power. J
The professional photojournalist was deeply affected
by the changes in the illustrated press. In order to remain
in the field, the photojournalist had to find other markets.
Some of the photographers who had worked for the large
American magazines were able to find work with trade

American Mass Media Magazines 157

 ,I

journals published by industrial giants. Corporate pub

lications had previously been rather tiresome reports
mainly filled with figures, but in recent years their make
up and contents had been changing radically. Today they
are interesting magazines produced with considerable
care and expense, carrying articles by well-known writers
and journalists. Photographic coverage is assigned to im
portant and well-paid photographers. Most of these pub
lications are given away upon request, while others are
house organs especially written for thousands of compa
ny employees. The goal of these magazines, to publicize
the company's products, is often disguised in articles and
photostories that appear to have no direct relationship
to the company. mM, for instance, is never mentioned in
its magazine Think. In Europe, many similar magazines
are published by large concerns-/'Electricite de France,
Credit Foncier, or those published by the drug industry.
Other photographers have been recycled into jobs with
publishing houses that need photographs to illustrate
their books. A few photographers have turned to tele
vision and specialize in documentaries, but selling these
films is difficult unless they deal with exceptionally up-to
date subjects. A new market for photographic archives
has been created by the numerous encyclopedias that
have been published all over the world in the last few
years. Their publishers had the clever idea of selling
encyclopedias in weekly installments at newsstands, at
the same price as weekly magazines. At the end of the
year, the publisher provides a binding for the volumes.
These encyclopedias are highly marketable because they
offer quantities of color photographs at a reasonable
price. (International co-publication considerably reduces
production costs.) The text is written in a pseudoscien
tific style, easily understood by ever yone. These encyclo
pedias are successful primarily because they manage to
give the reader the impression that he is achieving a better

158 Photogmphy & Society

understanding of our world and the increasingly complex
technological environment in which we live.
In the last few years, astute social observers have no
ticed a change that seems promising for the photojour
nals, assuming that television was one of the essential
elements in the death of Life magazine in 1972.. While it
seems probable that many mothers use TV as a baby
sitter, and that it has become a daily companion for the
older generation, the generation in between may be turn
ing its back on the tube. A young man who works for the
post office in France bitterly complained, 'I grew up in a
small village where people gathered every night to sing or
tell stories. Now every family is closed off in its house,
watching TV. My generation sees this as the destruction
of human relations.' The trend can be seen not only in
France, but in other countries as well, the u.s. included.
Marketing analyses have found that althOUgh people can
get quick information from television, they want not only
more time to look at images, but want to keep them as
well. Another factor in this evolution is the tremendous
interest in photography as an art.
For these reasons among others, the publishers of Life
have reissued the magazine as of October 1978. They
have raised its price considerably to avoid complete de
pendence upon the advertisers who previously aban
doned the magazine for television, and they will publish
it monthly; but television is no longer the overwhelming
competitor of the illustrated magazine.

American Mass Media Magazines 159

 .1

ADOLF- DER OBERMENSCH

SCHLUCKT GOLD UNO REDET BLECH


Photography in its many
forms proved to be viable
political tools, not only to
propagandize but also to
express public outrage, en
courage national confi
dence, and ridicule public
figures. John Heartfield's
photomontage left little to
the imagination in his por
trayal of Hitler's biological
needs. However, contri
vances were not always
necessary to make a com
ment-simple photographs
taken out of context or
positioned in a calculated
way could likewise affect
the enormous magazine
reading audiences.
Photography as a Political Tool
The current demand for press photographs has led free
lance photographers to join photographic agencies that
serve as intermediaries between the photographer and
the press. One of the first such agencies was set up in
America by George Grantham Bain (1865-1944). Bain
began as a magazine writer who also photographed his
own stories. He soon realized that publishers almost
always held onto his prints, but discarded his articles
when they received others on the same subject. At the
time sending photographs alone to the press was still an
unknown service. Sensing the business potential, Bain
founded several agencies in 1898, including the Montauk
Photo Concern. He hired professional photographers,
among them, Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952),
one of America's first female photographers to make a
name for herself. She was the only woman delegate at the
Third International Photographic Convention in Paris in
1900. With Alfred Stieglitz, she represented America.'39
The ever-increasing demand for photographs led to a
proliferation of press agencies all over the world. They
hired photographers or signed contracts with free-lance
photographers. Most agencies took a 50 percent cut,
sometimes more, claiming that they had to share their
profits with other agencies around the world. The pho
tographer, who had taken all the material risks, had no
way of controlling the sale of his photographs. It was
for this reason that Robert Capa and a few colleagues
founded the Maguum Agency in 1947.
 For the photographers of the Magnum Agency, to
which I also belonged between I947 and I954, photog
raphy was not only a way of making money but a means
of expressing their own feelings and ideas about con
temporary problems. Capa, for example, refused pub
lication of an important photostory entitled World
Youth, which had been the result of an expensive Mag
num effort on a worldwide scale. The publisher who
originally accepted the idea wanted to impose changes
that would have altered the spirit of the article. It was
finally published six months later in Holiday, which
agreed to reproduce it exactly as it had been conceived.
Few photojournalists, however, are able to impose
their own points of view. It takes very lirtle on the part
of an editor to give photographs a meaning diametrically
opposed to the photographer's intention. I experienced
this problem from the outset of my career. Before the
Second World War, share trading at the Paris Stock Ex
change still took place outdoors, under the arcades. One
day I took a series of photographs there, using a certain
stockbroker as my principal target. Sometimes smiling,
sometimes distressed, he was always mopping the sweat
from his round face and urging the crowd with sweeping
gestures. I sent these photographs to several European
magazines with the harmless title, 'Snapshots ofthe Paris
Stock Exchange.' Sometime later, I received clippings
from a Belgian newspaper which, to my surprise, had
printed my photographs with a headline reading: 'Rise
in the Paris Stock Exchange: stocks reach fabulous
prices.' Thanks to some clever captions, my innocent
little story took on the air of a financial event. My
astonishment bordered on shock when I discovered the
same photographs sometime later in a German news
paper with yet another caption: 'Panic at the Paris Stock
Exchange: fortunes collapse, thousands are tuined.' My
photographs illustrated perfectly the stockbroker's de
spair and the speculator's panic as stock value dropped.

I62 Photography & Society

The two publications had used my photographs in oppo
site ways, each according to its own purpose. The objec
tivity of a photograph is only an illusion. The captions
that provide the commentary can change the meaning
entirely. 140
In December 1956, under the headline 'Information or
Propaganda?' the weekly I'Express published a double
series of identical photographs taken during the Hun
garian rebellion. The pictures are identical, but their
order had been changed and the captions had been modi
fied by the editor. The idea was to show how various
government-run television stations could have used the
same pictures to give absolutely contradictory but ap-
parently truthful versions of the same eveut. U

For example:

Under a photograph showing a Russian tank in a

street:
First caption: 'In contempt of the people's right to self
determination, the Soviet government has sent armored
divisions to Budapest to suppress the uprising.'
Second caption: 'The Hungarian people have asked
the Soviets for help. Russian tanks have been sent to pro
tect the workers and to restore order.'

Under a photograph of Janos Kadar:

First caption: 'Under the protection of Soviet tanks,
the Stalinist Janos Kadar has formed a new government
and established a reign of police terror.'
Second caption: 'Thanks to the drastic measures taken
by the new government, formed by Janos Kadar and
unanimously supported by the populace, the rebellion
has been put down.'

Under a photograph of two young Hungarians:

First caption: 'Despite the bloody repression by Soviet
troops, Hungarian youth continues to fight, shouting,
"Death rather than slavery.'"

Photography as a Political Tool 163

 Second caption: 'Despite government appeals, fanatic
counterrevolutionaries have refused to lay down their
>,
arms and have continued their hopeless struggle.'

In September 1967, during the Biafran War, the West

German magazine Stern published an investigative piece
entitled 'The Mercenaries and Their Paradise.' The arti
de was illustrated with photographs taken mostly in the
Bukavu region by the photographer Paul Ribeau. A week
later, the Paris-based magazine Jeune Afrique repro
duced excerpts from this artide along with one of the
photographs showing the tortured bodies of two Mri
cans hanging by their arms from a tree. Within the week,
the same photographs had dunged captions. The Ger
man readers had read: 'Soldiers of the Congolese Na
tional Army took these Katanga policemen prisoner and
hung them from trees, leaving them to starve to death.
Schramme's white mercenaries saved their lives.' Readers
of Jeune Afrique, a weekly with a considerable Mrican
readership, read the caption: 'Soldiers of the Congolese
National Army, prisoners of the mercenaries.'
On 4 October 1967, Le Monde published a letter to
the editor signed by Paul Ribeau entitled: 'The Truth
about a Controversial Photograph':

The men hanging from the tree are neither Congolese sol

diers nor Katanga policemen. As the photograph clearly

shows, one of the two is in civilian clothes-light pants and
a dark shin. In this country where mercenaries, Katanga
policemen, and Mobutu's policemen 3re aU sensitive to the
prestige of the unionn, fighters do not wear civilian clothes.
In fact the two men were civilians who had committed the
crime of working as servants to the mercenaries. They had
heen captured by the Congolese National Anny who treated

them as traitors, tortured them and hung them still alive from
the branches of a palm tree. They were freed by mercenaries

who had unexpectedly returned to the area. I should add that
it is extremely rare for the Congolese National Anny to be
satisfied with simply torturing its enemies. Torture usually I

I
164 Photography & Society

I.
 precedes the cutting up of the parts of the body with a
machette which, in rum. is sometimes followed by a cannibal
festival. While this is not frequent, human bones have been
found near Bukavu, right next to a wood fire. I have photo
graphs showing what remains of men, women, and children
executed by the Congolese National Anny. Unfortunately,
human life is cheap in the Congo today. I would like to point
out that I am not the author of the captions attached to my
photographic essays as they recently appeared in various
French, English, American, German, and Italian publica
tions. I was surprised to read in Jeune Afrique the essay
from the Gennan magazine Stern....

Calculated juxtaposition is another way of changing

the meaning of photographs. In 1936, Life published a
photostory I had done on the distressed areas of England.
These highly industrialized regions had been the centers
of prosperous industries during the last century, but they
were hard hit by World War I and the great economic
crisis that followed. Most of these industries dated from
the nineteenth century and used antiquated methods.
They were unable to meet competition from modem
factories, and found it more expedient to abandon rather
than to modernize the old factories. The owners left the
region but the population remained to suffer. In 1936,
there were more than two million unemployed in
England.
When I arrived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the entire
ciry was unemployed. The naval shipyanls, with their
buildings almost in ruins, looked as thouglt they had gone
througlt a war. Among the tangled and rusry rails, rank
weeds and a few flowers were growing wild. I felt as if
I were visiring a cemetery. I took photographs of miser
able men in rags, weakened and reduced to inactiviry for
years, who lived on subsidies which barely kept them and
their families from starving to death. At Witton Park, in
Bishop Auckland's diocese, I photographed families with
more than eigltt people living in one room. The women

Photography as a Political Tool 165

 l!
with ravaged faces did not have the money to pay their A case study in calrulated
juxtaposition of photo
rent or feed their families. 'What will become of our
graphs: Life's coverage of
children?' they kept asking me in despair. the depressed areas of En
During the same period the Simpson scandal broke gland shared the same page
spread as the bejeweled
out. King Edward was in love with an American divor
Queen Mother in an article
cee. All the newspapers raged against him. English moral which was originally in
ity, still imbued with strict Victorian standards, could tended to document the
economic crisis suffered by
not accept Mrs. Simpson as queen.
post-war Britain but which
America was deeply offended by British public opinion.
ultimately served to criticize
Life published my photographs under the innocuous the British for their failure
to accept an American di
heading: 'This Is What Englishmen Mean by the De
vorcee as their queen
pressed Areas.' Right next to my pictures of poverty (photographs by Gisele
stricken people they had inserted a full-page photograph Freund).
of Queen Maty in a lace dress and covered with jewels.
With a four-strand pearl choker around her neck, she was
holding one of her grandsons on her lap and was flanked
by the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, who
were entrancing in their immaculate dresses. The brutal
contrast made any caption pointless. Mrs. Simpson was
avenged in the eyes of liberal America.
Here is another example which shows how a photo
story can be subtly turned into advertising. In Canada,
military service is not obligatory. To encourage young ..
men and women to enlist, the Canadian army launched
a sizable billboard advertising campaign during the ..

1950S. Its goal was to identify military service with tour

ism: 'Enlist and See the World.' Weekend Magazine, a

Sunday supplement for a chain of Canadian newspapers

with a circulation in the millions, rushed one of its best
journalists to Europe to write the article. I was assigned
to take the photographs. As soon as we arrived at Zwei
brucken, Gertnany, where the Royal Canadian Air Force
base was located, the journalist advised me to concentrate ..
on the young women's barracks. 'Study them carefully
and choose the one who best represents the ideal young
Canadian woman: a typical girl parents can recognize as
their own daughter, and brothers as their sister.'

166 Photography & Society "

 . lIE IIrI6SII
lIDS

--"'--

-----_ ...-

".111"".w_

Photography as a Political Tool 167

 The young woman who seemed to fit these require Another means of. manipu
lation: the eclectic choice of
ments best was named Sonia Nichols. She was unassum
photographs to illustrate an
ing, smiling, photogenic. She had blond hair and blue event. 'The camera angle de
eyes and she became the heroine of the article which ap tennines whether a person
appears likeable. repulsive,
peared several weeks later under the title 'Airwomen
or ridiculous,' as Duncan's
Overseas.' The story told how twenty-year-old Sonia, critic demonstrated in his
born in Berwick, Novia Scotia, had never had the op choice of Nixon iI1ustra ,
rions.
portunity to leave her native town before joining the ,
,I
R.C.A.F. Since joining the army, she had seen a good part !
of her own country and had traveled through Germany,
Paris, and Switzerland. Before the end of her tour of duty, .'

she would undoubtedly visit Italy and Scandinavia. At

the base, she learned foreign languages, mingled with the
local people, went with friends to see the countryside
and other points of interest. She participated in sports
in an ultramodern gymnasium and swam in a beautiful
pool. Sonia's life had become altogether exciting and full
of experiences that she would never have otherwise had.
My photographs, which took up several pages of the
text, showed Sonia holding the baby of her new German
friends, swimming in a pool, playing basketball, walking
in the country, and studying peasant life. All these photo
graphs were in black and white, except for one of Sonia
talking with a young soldier. The caption read simply:
'With A.C.I. Peter Colliver, Streetville, Ontario, who is
pulling a Saber Jet onto the runway.' The photograph
clearly suggested the possibility of meeting other young
people in the army and prompted all sorts of sentimental
daydreaming. Judging from my photographs, taken ac
cording to the directions of the Canadian journalist, life
in the army was a real picnic. I had not neglected to
photograph Sonia at her secretary's desk, but the pub
lisher had left out those pictures. The full-color cover
photograph showed a smiling Sonia in uniform saluting
against a blue sky. Sonia became the celebrity of the week
in Canada. She received numerous letters, including sev
eral marriage proposals. Canadian army enlistments in-

168 Photography & Society

creased. This photostory was what Daniel J. Boorstin
would call a pseudo-event, and Sonia was a pseudo
celebriry entirely fabricated for a particular cause. tOt
A political figure can easily be ridiculed by an unat
tractive photograph. The most intelligent man can ap
pear idiotic if he is photographed with his mouth wide
open or with his eyes squinting. Here is just one example
among thousands:
In October 1969, the New York Times Book Review
published a long article on David Douglas Duncan's Self
portrait U.S.A., a book containing more than three hun
dred photographs taken during the 1968 Republican and
Democratic Conventions. The review was illustrated with
four of the book's least flattering photographs of Richard
M. Nixon, the Republican Party candidate. Taken out of
context, these images made Nixon appear stupid and
unattractive. The critic's commentary was as follows:
'There are perhaps a dozen Richard Nixons here who
to the best of my knowledge have never been encountered
before. (It's a small world and an improbable one: Navy
Lieutenant Nixon and Marine Lieutenant Duncan met in
the Solomon Islands a few wars back and became fast
friends. Thus it came to pass that Duncan, and Duncan
alone, was given the run of the Nixon penthouse at Miami
Beach. Historians may learn as much by consulting these
Nixon pictures as by studying tons of correspondence: 142
What the reviewer failed to mention was that the four
photographs printed with his article were counterbal
anced in the book by other flattering photographs of
Nixon. The camera angle determines whether a person
appears likable, repulsive, or ridiculous. A photograph
of General de Gaulle, for example, taken from above,
lengthens his nose, but taken from below, his chin is en
larged and his forehead broadened. The use of the photo
graphic image thus becomes an ethical problem because it
can be used deliberately to falsify.
In June 1966, Paris-Match, with a circulation of more

Photography as a Political Tool 169

than 1.2 million copies, published an eight-page article
called 'With the Nazis in 1966.' Everyone at the time
expected that the extreme rightist German National
Democratic Parry would do very well in the provincial
elections scheduled to take place a month later. Twenry
years had passed since World War II, but the French,
still traumatized by the Nazi atrocities, felt threatened
by the parry that played on nostalgia for the Third Reich.
As the subject was very topical, the Paris-Match edirors
considered the story important enough to feature on the
cover.
The picture story began with a full-page color photo
graph of a young man wearing a swastika armband
around his white shirt, who was raising a toast to three
other young men. An immense Nazi flag hung on the wall
in the background. The caption read, 'German Nazis
with Third Reich relics, drinking beer and singing Horst
Wessel Lied in chorus.' Pictures of Bavarian villagers and
their mayor followed; captions explained that they were
former Nazis, although nothing in the photographs sug
gested it. The story ended with some photographs of the
new parry's founder and a sensational two-page spread
in black and white showing young men in SS uniform.
The caption read: 'At the home of Peter Breuer, a citizen
of Munich, who owns a collection of 400 SS and SA
uniforms. A great enthusiast of the Third Reich, he salutes
the bust of Hitler.' A few days later, the English Daily
Express (more than 4 million copies) printed the first of
these sensational photographs, and in the U.S.S.R. the
same photograph was shown on television, reaching IOO
million viewers.
But the photographs were frauds. One of the Paris
Match editors had rented costumes from a dealer by the
name of Breuer and had convinced some young Germans
to pose as a joke. The group of men raising their beer
glasses were firemen from a Bavarian village who had

170 Photography & Society

been given a barrel of beer by the French editor and told
to drink to Franco-German friendship. The German gov
ernment protested through its press, publishing many
articles denouncing the hoax in detail. But Paris-Match
never retracted the article, and millions of French, Eng
lish, and Russians who had seen these photographs be
lieved them to be genuine.
In the summer of 1975, another affair took place
which also caused a stir. During a strike at the Chaus
son factory in Paris, several French newspapers published
front-page photographs of men leading dogs with the
caption 'Policemen inside a factory with dogs trained
to attack the strikers.' Later it was learned that the pho
tographs were taken at the guard's entrance to the Paris
Fair.
The meaning of a photograph can also be distorted by
using a paintbrush or a pair of scissors. A few examples
of falsification through retouching and cropping were
published in the magazine Photo in June 1970. In one
photograph, Alexander Dubcek, who had fallen into dis
favorfollowing Czech 'normalization,' had been removed
from the otiginal negative so that he was no longer shown
beside President Svoboda receiving the salutes of the
crowd. Only the flagstones, which did not fit together
properly, and the different position of a building bore
witness to the deception. With drawings, the magazine
showed how the photograph had been faked.
During the two world wars, both the German press
and the Allied press were filled with doctored photo
graphs. As a rule, only carefully chosen, encouraging
photographs were published. The censors on both sides
suppressed photographs showing anything that might
hurt the war effort, such as camouflaged factories, fortifi
cations, artillery sites. They also avoided showing pho
tographs of the destruction and suffering caused by their
own armies in enemy countries. John Morris, a Life pho-

Photography as a Political Tool 171

tographic editor in London during the last war, wrote
in an article published in Harper's Magazine in Septem
ber 1972:

The faces of the severely wounded and the dead were taboo.
so the 'next of kin' would not be offended . . . Finally, and
this is crucial to an understanding of the fonnulation of pub
lic opinion at long range, the photographer did not show
his side being ghastly. I recall the candor of the British cen
sor through whom I attempted to pass some pictUres of the
charnel of air-raid victims in Berlin. 'Very interesting,' he
said. 'You may have them ilier the war.'

The statement did not reflect the censor's personal feel

ings, but it was part of a carefully planned effort to
prevent the publication of photographs capable of
awakening the public's conscience and making the war
unpopular.
The indoctrination of the photographers themselves
was so great that, convinced they were fighting for a just
cause, they censored themselves and did not photograph
scenes that appeared unfavorable to the countries they
represented: 'The standard operating procedure estab
lished during WWII was to show our side fighting clean
ly-bombs away in the brilliant sunshine of daring day
light raids. We could show a certain amount of suffering
from their wanton attacks, but never so much as to lead
to despair.
'Photographically, their side lived by similar rules.
You will never find a picrure of Hitler inspecting dIe gas
ovens of a concentration camp. And the Japanese were
not shown picrures of dIe men dIey maimed at Pearl
Harbor; dIey saw dIe spectacle of their victory from dIe
air. Just as we gave our people the beautiful mushroom
cloud over Hiroshima.'143
This state of mind changes only when a war becomes
openly unpopular. John Morris asserts that the change
was first noticeable toward the end of the war in Korea
where photographers witnessed a double tragedy: the

172 Photography & Society

As photography began to
exhibit its potential to re
veal more and more, it was
manipulated to show less
and less. War-time photog
raphy is a perfecr example:
pictures of cheering crowds,
such as Werner Bischofs
Children ofHiroshima
Cheering their Sovereign
(1 9 5 1), were used to boost
national confidence at a
time when suffering at home
threatened the nation's mo
rale.
first was that of American GIs who had to fight in a war
they did not understand; the second that of a people tom
asunder by war in their homeland.144 The conflict reached
its height with the Viemam War, which caused such
serious divisions in American public opinion.
The photographic press and television played an im
portant role in awakening the public conscience, but only
to a certain extent. There is no official censorship in the
United States; but during the two world wars photogra
phers censored themselves because they believed it was
necessary to support the cause. As years went by, how
ever, and as the destruction in Vietnam by American
bombers became so horrifying, press photographers on
locarion were overwhelmed. Non-American photogra
phers, who had even less reason to believe in the war,
were the first to denounce it. Their heartbreaking photo
graphs showing the misery of the civilian population and
the suffering of the GIs awakened the American con
science to the arrociry of the war.
Photography as a Political Tool 173

The history of Robert Dois-
neau's controversial photo
graph demonstrates the
problems of a photograph's
captions and context. De
scribed by a number of
different (and usually in
accurate) captions, a photo
could be used contrary to
the photographer's inten
tions and the subject's
wishes. This phorograph
was used to portray intem
perance in one case, prosti
tution in another-the court
held both the magazine and
Doisneau's agent respon
sible for the photograph's
abuse; Doisneau was ex
Olsed as an 'innocent artist.'
Photography and the Law
In addition to the continual problem of finding work,
press photographers are perpetually forced to defend
their rights. Reproduction rights to a photograph are
protected by law, but these rights vary from country to
country and there is no international copyright law that
offers automatic protection all over the world. The In
ternational Copyright Convention, to which sixty-two
countries have subscribed since 1971 (the Soviet Union
since February 1973), does not attempt to rule on the
basic rights of photographers. It simply guarantees a
photographer's rights in accordance with the laws of the
country where his picture is published.
In France, the law of I I March 1957 includes photo
graphs among creative works and protects them for fifty
years after the photographer's death. This copyright term
was later extended by eight years (the duration ofthe two
Q
rld wars).
In America, photographers cannot claim exclusive
n ts to their photographs unless each print carries the
copyright notice: followed by the name of the author
and the year the picture was take h)Until recently, the
copyright term was twenty-eight years, beginning with
publication and renewable by the author or his heirs for
an additional twenty-eight. In September 1976, a new
law was passed. Copyright protection for those works
created after 1 January 1978 would cover the lifetime
of the creator plus fifty years. For works published be
fore that date, the original renewable period was in
creased from twenty-eight to forry-seven years.
175
 In West Germany the law is different. A photograph,
whether published or not, is automatically protected from
the moment it was taken for a period of twenty-five
years, after which time it falls into the public domain.
If it is published at any time during this twenty-five-year
period it is protected for another twenty-five years from
the date of publication.
In Russia, the decree of 21 Februaty 197 3 guarantees
the author's rights throughout his lifetime and for twenty
five years after his death. However, government legisla
tion in any of the federal republics can shorten the dura
tion of the author's rights to photographic works to ten
years from the date of publication if a photograph is con
sidered publicly useful or culturally interesting. In other
words, ten years after the first publication, photographs
can be used without any payment to the author.
The present situation is chaotic. Even in countries where
the photographer's rights are clearly defined by law, these
rights are continually ignored. In France, for example,
photographs are protected by law against all reproduc
tion defects or abuses such as unauthorized duplication
or resale. In addition, the law expressly provides in Ar
ticle 6 that the author shall enjoy the right to demand
the use of his name. But many newspapers systematically
fail to print names along with photographs not taken by
'house photographers.' Some offer double pay for un
signed photographs, which can be reused easily. It is not
vanity, however, that leads a photographer to insist that
his name be mentioned. The omission opens the door to
all sorts of copyright infringements
production tech
niques today have become so sophisncated that copies
ti
can be made of anything. When the photographer's name
is omitted, the users of the photograph feel no obligation
to pay for the author's rights despite the fact that the
free-lance photographer's chief source of revenue is the
sale of reproduction rights of his pictures:-'
Many good journalists, publishers, 1iiid advertising

176 Photography & Society

people consider the photographer's contribution to their
publication negligible in spite of the growing use of pho
tography to attract the public. The publishers' contempt
for photography can be explained psychologically. Pho
tographs have lost their prestige as countless amateurs
have begun to snap shutters daily, even though in most
cases there is an enormous difference in quality between
amateur and professional photography.
Judicial interpretations of the copyright laws have
caused further problems. For example, the question has
arisen as to whether the photographic reproduction of a
painting is a creative work. In one case, a photographer
published a reproduction of a masterwork with the per
mission of the owner, who had bought it at auction.
The reproduction rights were paid to the photographer,
but the painter's heirs objected on the grounds that they
alone had the rights to the photograph, even though the
picture itself no longer belonged to them. The court de
cided in their favor, drawing a distinction between re
production rights and reproduction costs.
rA further problem: certain agencies sell photographs
';ia
u er their own name and collect royalties, although the
photographs may have fallen into the public domain
many years before. Under the law, the agencies in this
case have rights only to the reproduction costs and an
additional profit margin. As long as publishers, iguorant
of the law, agree to pay royalties for photographs in the
public domain, unscrupulous agencies will profit from
them. .,
MallY legal charges have been brought by those who
have been photographed unawares in the streets or- in
such public places as restaurants or theaters. The law
indeed protects one's right to privacy, but in France pub
lic figures, including statesmen and well-known artists,
cannot refuse to have their pictures published. Who,
then, is to decide on the importance of a person? Ob
viously the judge must give his own interpretation of the

Photography and .he Law 177

law. The photojournalist's work is singularly complicat
ed by these difficult legal problems.
The photographer Robert Doisneau saw one of his
photographs used in a different context from his inten
tion. For him, Parisians had always been the most fasci
nating of subjects. He loved to wander the streets and
stop at cafes. One day, in a small cafe on the rue de
Seine where he was accustomed to meeting his friends,
he noticed a delightful young woman at the bar drinking
a glass of wine. She was seated next to a middle-aged
gentleman who was looking at her with a smile that was
both amused and greedy. Doisneau asked and received
permission to photograph them. The photograph ap
peared in the magazine Ie Point, in an issue devoted to
cafes illustrated with Doisneau's photographs." 5 He
handed this photograph, among others, to his agency.
All sorts of publications call on agencies when they
need pictures to illustrate an article. Sometime later,
Doisneau's photograph appeared in a small magazine
published by the temperance league to illustrate an article
on the evils of alcohol. The gentleman in the photograph,
who was a drawing instructor, was not pleased. 'I shall
be taken for a boozer; he complained to the apologetic
photographer who had no control over how his photo
graphs were used. Things went from bad to worse when
the same photograph appeared in a scandal sheet which
had reproduced it from Ie Point without the permission
of either the agency or the photographer. The caption
accompanying the photograph read: 'Prostitution in the
Champs-Elysees.' This time the drawing teacher was fu
rious and sued the magazine, the agency, and the photog
rapher. The court fined the scandal magazine a large sum
of money for fraud, and the agency, which had not re
leased the photograph, was also found guilty. But the
court acquitted the photographer, ruling that he was an
'innocent artist.
The stoty has an epilogue. A well-meaning journalist

178 Photography & Society

who was the Paris correspondent for a newspaper in the
south of France published an article recounting the story.
He vehemendy accused the photographer of hiding be
hind curtains to take scandalous shots." Doisneau does
not work this way, but the paparazzi do.
Numerous errors are made daily by the press and pub
lishing houses when they choose photographs for stories
they were never intended to illustrate. A German pub
lisher once asked me for a color photograph of an Indian
for the cover of one of his books, without specifying the
rype of Indian. I sent him a pictUre of a very beautiful
Mexican woman. Imagine my astonishment at later see
ing this photograph on the cover of a book on India,
although I had clearly indicated to the publisher that
she was a native Mexican.
The following are just a few examples of the many suits
between photographers and publishers:

A large color photograph of General de Gaulle, published

in Paris-Match, had been copied by a designer, reproduced
as gold souvenirs and sold in large numbers. The designer
admitted to copying, and a penalty was amicably paid to the
photographer.

Recently, a photographer saw a television program on a

children's book, the first page of which carried a painting
made from a photograph he had taken. Authorization was
required from the photographer for both the painting and
its copies. This affair, too, was amicably settled.

An influential weekly once purposely neglected to print the

name of the photographer under his pictUre illustrating an
important article. On 7 April 1967, a small claims court in
Paris found against the weekly and ruled that placing the
name of the photographer among the names of other photog
raphers and agencies at the end of the article did not con
stitute proper identification of the photographer for each
picture.

A famous producer bad used some photoreporters' prints in

one of his films without their permission and without men-

Photography and the Law 179

 tioning the photographets' names. In a judgment tendered
on 1 3 December 1968, the court ordered the producer to
pay a large sum of money in damages and interest. The
ruling pointed out that photographetS, like authots, had the
right to recognition for their work, and that their names
had to either appear on the photograph or be listed in the
credits.

In another case, the court ruled that the use of aerial photo
graphs as posters without mentioning the source or the name
of the photographer was an attack on the integrity of his
work and the respect due his name.

A photographer filed a complaint against a newspaper that

used his photographs without his name and resold them to
other publications without authorization and without men
tion of his name. In a decision on 17 May 1969, a Paris
court fined the newspaper, ruling that the newspaper had
infringed not only upon the photographer's financial rights,
but also upon his moral rights, making it difficult for him
to require that his name be mentioned on other reproduc
tions of his photographs.

In all these cases, the court decided in favor of the ,

photographers; hut there are countless cases of fraudu

lent reproduction that are never spotted and never tried.

The photojournalist must continually be on the alert in

order to prevent infringements of his rights.

180 Photography & Society

The Scandal-Mongering Press

The growing popularity of scandal magazines in Italy

during the fifties led to a new breed of photographers
called the paparazzi. Fellini showed them at work in La
Dolce Vita, which criticized an idle and degenerate seg
ment of Roman society. To pry into people's private lives,
the paparazzi use telephoto lenses, which were perfected
during the last war to spy on the enemy. The German
army used the telephoto lens to film the English coast.
Further improvements were made through space science.
Scandal sheets exist in all capitalist countries. They
are known as the 'rainbow press' in Germany, where
they are all the rage. In socialist countries, these maga
zines are considered immoral and cannot be published.
France Dimancbe, lei-Paris,or Noir et Blanc are a few
of the French scandal sheers that carry love stories and
gossip. Photographs are essential for documentation, and
such magazines pay dearly for them. The subjects of most
of these articles are members of the jet set: movie actresses
such as Liz Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, and Zsa Zsa Gabor;
playboys; rich businessmen; and even princesses and
queens such as Soraya, Margaret, Farah Dibh, or Prince
Rainier's wife, Grace Kelly. The paparazzi plant them
selves in front of the stars' homes day and night, and
near the hotels and fashionable night clubs where they
have the best chance of surprising their victims. These
periodicals feed millions of readers, mostly women, with
stories about the love affairs and intimate lives of famous
and rich people, allowing them to dream of escaping the

181
mediocrity of their own evetyday existence. Scandal
sheets also serve as an outlet for the reader's frustration
with life's problems and her envy of those with better
luck, for while readers want to daydream about the lives
of celebrities, they also want to be privy to every bit of

j, otographers who specialize in this kind of reporting

kfen take their photographs with the consent of their
subjects. When a photographer is well known in this set,

he is often apprised of an event, a meeting, or the ap
pearance of a celebrity in a partiCUI r
sons themselves or by their press agen
lace by the per
Suits leading to
trial are rare. The actor Samy Frey, e then husband of
Brigitte Bardot, sued lei-Paris for libel as the result of a
series of articles and photographs that had been taken
against his will. The article accused him of 'destroying'
Bardot.'47 In 1971, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis pressed
charges against the photographer Ronald E. Galella. He
was forced to appear in court, where she hoped to put
an end to the pursuit to which she and her children were
continually subjected. In a deposition given to the judge,
John F. Kennedy, Jr., then eleven years of age, declared
that Galella 'dashed at me, jumped in my path, discharged
flashbulbs in my face.' Caroline, then fourteen years old,
claimed that 'I do not feel safe when he is near.' Galella,
for his part, sued Jackie Kennedy and her three secret
service agents for $ I . 3 million for preventing him from
making a living. 'I don't want to bother them; he told the
judge. 'I try to photograph celebrities as they are-in spon
taneous unrehearsed moods. This is what I call my papa
razzi approach.' 148 The judge decided that in the future
Galella had to stay more than 1 5 0 feet from Mrs. Onassis
and her children.
In 1972, Jackie Kennedy Onassis was once more a vic
tim of the paparazzi. P/aymen, an Italian erotic magazine,
ran fourteen nude photographs of her in one issue that
sold 750,000 copies in twenty-four hours. Despite all

182 Photography & Society

the precautions taken to prevent the paparazzi from
approaching Scorpios-an enormous island where the
Onassises lived protected by armed guards and a flotilla
of motorboats-photographers in skin-diving outfits,
using telephoto lenses, had succeeded in surprising Jackie
sunbathing in the nude. 'What a beautiful body! What a
pretty woman,' exclaimed Madame Tattilo, the editor of
Playmen, after she had decided to print the pictures.
Jackie did not even make an attempt to sue this time.
The photographs were eventually printed in scandal
magazines aU over the world (except in Playboy, which
refused them!). Even magazines like Paris-Match, which
do not consider themselves scandal sheets, profited from
the occasion. Magazines today are fiUed with pretty nude
young women, but to find the former wife of the tragically
slain American president among them was enough to
shock many and cause a scandal.
Under the guise of naturisme, a nudist health move
ment, all sorts of magazines filled with nudes were sold
in the thirries. Every newsstand carried them, although
vendors never displayed them openly. (In France, the pho
tographic reproduction of a nude body is punishable by
law, if a judge considers it indecent.) With the gradual
lifting of sexual taboos in the fifties, however, porno
graphic magazines sprang up everywhere. Playboy, the
most famous of all, was founded in America by Hugh
Hefuer, the twenry.seven-year-old son of a preacher. The
first issue was undated when it appeared in December
1953, because Hefuer had borrowed $Il,OOO to cover
publicarion costs, and had to wait until the first issue was
sold out before being able to produce the second. Ioo Hef
ner introduced the 'Playmate,' a photograph of an enrire
ly naked young woman. The first of these beauties was
Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was Hefuer's prototype of the
Playmate; her expansive curves inspired his choice of all
those who followed. In 1971, A. C. Spectorsky, the
editor-in-chief of Playboy, declared that if all the nude

The Scam:L:l1-Mongering Press r83

girls published during the eighteen years of Playboy's
existence could be rolled into one, she would weigh 11'1l
tons and have a bust of 7,242 inches.'so
By the end of 1972, Playboy had attracted 6.5 million
male readers. Its great success came from playing on sexu
al conquest and social advancement, the two biggest aspi
rations of the American middle-class male. By following
Playboy's advice on dress, for instance, one was assured
of social success. From the outset, Playboy suggested that
its readers' wardrobes include at least seven to ten shirts,
'assuming you wear a clean shirt every day, a practice
we recommend.' Again, in the fall of 197 I , readers learned
that in fashion 'leather is still king.' 151 )

Sexual problems are treated in the ' Playboy Forum,'

a section devoted to an exchange of ideas and advice be
tween readers and editors based on Playboy 'philosophy.'
The exchange is not unlike its counterpart in women's
magazines.
What kind of man reads Playboy? According to a re
cent survey, 50 percent of its readers are less than thirty
five years old, with an annual income of more than
$ I 5,000, among whom 64 percent are married. The
rypical reader is a man who is bored with his domestic
life and who has no special interests. Above all, the mag
azine's attraction lies in the dispariry between its de
,
scription of life and the lives of its readers, for the life
described by Playboy is entirely imaginary. Playboy's
adverrising is revealing. For the most part, it shows
young, handsome, e1egandy dressed young men, photo
graphed near powerful cars or yachts, generally receiv
ing admiring glances from pretty girls.

Yes, the world says Yes to Benson & Hedges Gold.

Have you already said Yes?

This cigarette advertisement is illustrated with a color
photograph of a foppish young man in front of a chess

184 Photography & Sodety

set (symbol of intelligence) looking at an open package
of cigarettes he is holding in his hands. A young girl,
leaning on his shoulder, follows his gaze. In January
1973 Playboy carried an ad for a stereo fearuring the
intertwined bodies of a young man and woman. The
woman's ample chest is well displayed.
Playboy's primary attraction is its talk about sex and
the abundant illustrations thereof. The issue of January
1973 contained 2.60 pages, 78 of advertising. Among the
illustrations, there were 41 pictures of nudes; 1 2. draw
ings and pornographic cartoons; 7 pages of Charles
Bragg's erotic drawings illustrating the Apocalypse; nude
photographs from the film The Sense of Life, 'with an
abundance of flesh and fantasy; according to the editors;
and finally the famous erotic comic strips. The 4 1 nude
photographs included all the monthly Playmates of the
previous year. Under eaclJ picture of these naked young
girls, there were pictures of them in their 'civvies' with
a listing of their names, their jobs, and their hopes for
the future. For example: Ellen Mic1Jaels, Miss MarclJ
1972., had received a degree in art from Queensborough
College and had temporarily stopped her work, but
planned to continue toward her B.A.: 'I'll probably end
up teaching; she explained, 'but right now I'm encour
aged by my progress in modeling here in New York City.'
Miss August, Linda Summers, left work in her stepfather's
health-food store for a new career as an escrow officer
in Chula Vista, California. All the Playmates in Playboy
seem to come from respectable families who supposedly
find nothing odd about their daughters appearing nude
for the delight of millions of men.
A true measure of Playboy's respectability lies in the
number of famous contributing writers and journalists,
who include Vladimir Nabokov, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alber
to Moravia, John Kenneth Galbraith, and others. Even
the Roman Catholic ChurclJ uses Playboy to proselytize.
Father Joseph Lup of Pikesville, Maryland, a member of

The Scandal-Mongering Press 185

Hugh Hefner capitalized on
the lifting of sexual taboos
in America in the 1 ';) ;; OS to
illustrau hi ll1agazie with
photographs of scantily dad
\vomcn. He is shown here
,>urrounded by some of the
bunny family \'hich bc.:ame
his trdemak and the basis
of his multi-million dollar
empire.
the Order of the Holy Trinitv, took out a full-page ad in
T 9 7 1 at a cost of S 1 0,000 to recruit young priests '"con
scious of their social duty.' The effect was 'fantastic and
totally unpredicted.'
Only twenty years ago, the average American would
han been profoundly shocked bv a magazine like PL,y
boy. In today's 'plastic society; Hugh Hefner, along with
\Xtalt Disney, is considered one of the 't".o great puritan
entrepreneurs of culture in the twentieth century,' 152 and
Playboy is ranked high among other WASP-style maga
zines. 'How has Hefner managed to rank next to Disney?'
asked the very serious Protestant magazine Christian
Century in dismay.15J Hugh Hefner took over 'those
things that the puritan had ah.'ays imagined joy to be,
yet had repressed, and embraced them as healthy and
valuable, and advertised them as freedom and self
expression.' In the past, you could feel guilty for just
having sex; today, thanks to Hefner, you feel guilty if
you don't. Disney and Hefner represent a closed and
guiltless \\'orld, controlled by a mechanical and simplistic
imagination.154
Playboy Inc has founded many businesses, clubs, ho
tels, and a publishing house. The corporation has invest
ed in a record company. financed films, and launched
European editions of the magazine. Other magazines
copying its formula have already appeared. England's
Penthouse has been printing an American edition since
1 9 7 T ; Italy has Playmen; and France Lui. In 1 9 7 1 ,
eighteen years after the appearance o f Playboy, Hefner
offered one million shares of stock at $24 each, keeping
seven million shares for himself. Wtth a fortune estimated
at around $ I 64 million,ls5 Hefner is today among the
half-dozen American multimillionaires who o\ve their
success only to themselves.
In the mid-seventies, however, Playboy Inc.'s profits
registered a loss of almost 5 0 percent, the first loss since
Playboy was founded. In an article printed by Time in
The Sc,mdJI-.\fongering Press 187
August 1 9 7 5 , it was noted that the men's magazine had The uneven acceptance of
sexual freedom is high
had to reduce its subscription base, which reached its
lighted by photographs. In
peak at 7 million in 1 9 72, to 5.8 million. This represents America, bare-chesred bun
the largest loss of subscribers ever registered in all of nies have appeared in large
centerfold photographs
magazine history. The decline is explained not only by
since 19 'i " while in France
the economic crisis, but also, ironically by the success of the picnire of a man's ex
the sexual revolution for which Playboy fought so hard. posed derriere caused a
ruckus in 1972. If the pic
Once extremely provocative, Playboy seems curiously
ture had been drawn rather
old-fashioned today, in comparison with its competitors. than photographed, there
In 1 94 6 there was much publicity about the stoty of might have been less opposi
tion, but since it appeared in
an American soldier who had killed a prostitute in Paris
a country where a photo
after spending a night with her. Psychiatrists claimed that graphed nude could be
the young American, brought up in his country's puri deemed indecent by the
court and punishable by
tanical tradition. had killed the woman to free himself
law, the artist, his agent.
from his feelings of guilt. A few years later, Hefner's and his record company
genius sensed the end of sexual taboos in America. Pho were fined for the poster.

tography struck him as the perfect means of manipulat

ing and satisfying the erotic desires of his contemporaries,
while at the same time projecting himself as the great
moralizer of his day.
The liberation from sexual taboos has not taken on the
same explosive form in France that it has in the Anglo
Saxon and Nordic countries, dominated for centuries by
repressive Protestantism. The French have a reputation
as lovers, and sex has never been considered sinful in
France. On the other hand, bourgeois morality is strictly
defended by French law. The public display of a photo i
graph showing a nude backside can cost dearly as the pop
singer Michel Polnareff found out. j
In 1 9 7 2 Polnareff was scheduled to gi\'e a concert at
the Olympia, the largest music hall in Paris. \'V'ith his I
\
publicity agent, he dreamed up a photographic poster of I

himself \....ith sunglasses, \\learing a \\'oman's broad j

brimmed hat and a lace shirt descending to just about
his nude buttocks. Six thousand of these posters were
plastered on the walls of Paris. Half of Paris laughed
".;hile the other half was indignant. Henri Lariviere, a

188 Phutogr..Jphy 0 Society

 1
"I
professional poster-hanger, undoubtedly outraged by the
singer's backside, had it covered with a white square,
imitating the French television signal which warns par
ents that films have been judged harmful for youngsters.
Polnareff was brought before a judge and accused of
exhibiting an obscene poster. The following excerpt from
the dialogne between the judge and the singer is worthy
of Courteline, the French comic writer of the early twen
tieth century.

JUDGE: So you wanted to score a publicity hit and

shock the bon bourgeois?

POLNAREFF: Not at all. It was simply a joke. I just want

ed to make people laugh. There's too much
moroseness [a word used by former Premier
Jacques Chahan-Delmas to descrihe the
current atmosphere in France] in this
country.

JUDGE: In sum you're out to provide a remedy for

everything that has gone wrong in France.
i

POLNAREFF: Why not? The image of my country
shouldn't be limited to the fountains of
Versailles and Camembert cheese.

JUDGE: D o you think o f yourself a s an historical

monument?

POLNAREFF: France's glories are not only in the past.

J U D G E: Your poster is indecent.

P O LNAREFF: I didn't think so.
I

r
JUDGE: That's because you can't see yourself.

After two weeks of deliberation, the judge fined the singer

60,000 francs (10 francs for each poster), the record com
pany 60,000 francs, and his press agent, who had sup
ported the scheme with 30,000 francs, a sum total of
1 50,000 francs ($30,000) for having posted a completely

190 Photography & Society

nude rear end on the walls of Paris. Today, this poster
has become a collector's item.
What scandalized the judge and many Parisians was
the fact that it was a photograph. A drawing would have
undoubtedly gotten by more easily, but the basic realism
of the photograph (the singer's buttocks were much whit
er than his tanned legs) had made this advettising mes
sage too aggressive.

The Scandal-Mongering Press 191

 .

Claims that photography is
art are made for a number of
different techniques, from
the simple, early compo
sitions of Stieglitz to the
photocollages of John
Heartfield, from the use of
photographic processes
without a camera to the
unedited recording of some
thing which could be con
sidered artistic in itself,
such as Brassai's picture of
graffiti (1945).
Photography as Art
Today, there are tens of thousands of professional pho
tographers, some of whose works are of outstanding doc
umentary value, artistic quality, and imagination. Two
major groups have emerged from among these photogra
phers: the 'concerned' photographers, for whom photog
raphy is a way of expressing their involvement with socIal
issues; and those who have chosen photography as a
medium of personal artistic expression. In both cases,
they can be creators or simple craftsmen, but all are de
scendants of those who, after its half-century of stagna
tion, had revitalized the prestige of the photographic
medium. These predecessors were intimately involved in
the artistic and political movements of the twenties.
The tremendous upheaval in Europe and America fol
lowing the First World War gave birth to many often
contradictory movements that influenced artistic trends
of the period. In America, writers such as Dreiser, Sin
clair, Hemingway, and Steinbeck, pushed toward an
aggressive, almost documentary realism that would re
flect their personal crises in confronting the brutaliry of
American life. They were often reproached for their
'photographic' sryle. In Russia, the films of Eisenstein
and Pudovkine were charting a new course for the art of
the cinema. Russian writers of the twenties described
Soviet life and glorified the revolutionary epic. For the
first time, enormously enlarged photographs were dis
tributed to fix the leaders' images in the minds of the
people forever. In France, the surrealist movement linked
19 3
real facts of daily life to unconscious motives. Man Ray
made photographs without a camera using the primitive
technique of assembling objects on a piece of sensitized
paper and then exposing them to light. Rediscovering
the process by chance, be named these photograms after
himself, calling them rayographs. Influenced by surrealist
theory, he thought of them as a kind of automatic
writing, the result of the chance placement of objects." o
Several years earlier, Christian Chad had been experi I
menting with the same technique in Germany.
I'
When photographs began to appear in newspapers at
the beginning ofthe century, people clipped them out and
Man Ray (1880-1974) cre
pasted them in albums. In this purely mechanical juxta ated photographs (or what
position of images, the photograph's meaning was not hecalledrayographs) by rna
changed. Later, the Dadaists of the twenties made col nipnlatinglight, objects, and
light-sensitive paper. His
lages by assembling pieces of clipped photographs and conception ofthe camera
drawings. They used photographic images out of context less process-'automatic
as a way of attacking conventional art. In photomon writing"-contrasted with
I...aszl6 Moboly-Nagy's ap
tage, on the other hand, the photograph retains all of proach of calrulated exper
irs significance. The form was created by John Heart iments (see pages I96-I97),
field, who was born in Germany in 1891. During the although both used the ,
same materials (Man Ray,
First World War he was an avowed pacifist who, in pro Rayograph, 19")'
test of official propaganda against the English, decided ,

to Anglicize his name by changing it from Helmut Herz

feld to John Heartfield. He became a friend of George
Grosz, the painter whose aggressive drawings criticized
bourgeois society. Together they created collages, first
against the war and then against the Weimar Republic
which had crushed the November Revolution of 1 91 8 .
After 1920, Heartfield used photography exclusively to
unmask the reactionary character of the ruling class. He
began making photomontages and called himself a mon
teur, partly
to suggest his editorial function, partly after
the German mechanics and electricians who wore clothes
called Monteuranzuge. Using carefully chosen photo
graphs, without changing the significance of any, he jux
taposed them on a single backing to create a new collec-

194 Photography & Society


John Heartfield used pho
tography in an unconven
tional way to make political
commentaries. The constit
uent photographs of his
photomontages retained in
dividual significance while
suggesting ironies and criti
cism by their juxtaposition
(John Heartfield, Untitled
rotogravure, I 93 6).
tive meaning for the whole. John Heartfield joined the
rank of the extreme left, and his photomontag ap
peared in the illustrated communist weekly A.I.Z., on
book covers from the Berlin publishing house of Malik,
and on posters around the country. Their impact lies in
the simplicity of their composition, which makes his
ideas accessible to everyone. In his hands, photography
became a formidable weapon in the class struggle.'57
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the great photographic theoreti
cian, was the first to understand the new creative possibil
ities photography had opened up. In his 1925 Bauhaus
publication, Painting, Photography, Film, he prophesied
the future ofphotography and contemporary art.'5. More
than thirty years before his time he defined artistic move
ments that only began to develop in the second half of the
twentieth century. His early ideas on the role of photog
raphy, based on practical expetience, were later confirmed
by the philosopher Walter Benjamin in his significant
say, 'The Work of Art during the Age of Technical Re
production; '59 and his Short History ofPhotography.
Born in Hungary in 1895, Moholy-Nazy studied law,
but soon left school to devote himself entirely to paint
ing. He joined the Hungatian avant-garde artistic move
ment Ma ('Today'), whose goals were similar to the
French esprit nouveau ('New Spirit') through which Le
Corbusier and Ozenfant explored the interdependence
of painting, sculpture, and modem industrial technology.
In 1920 Moholy arrived in Berlin and joined the Dada
movement. It was during this period that, unfamiliar
with the work of Chad or Man Ray, he too created pho
tograms without a camera. For Man Ray, they were sort
of automatic writing, as I've noted; but for Moholy the
composition of photograms was a carefully thought-out
process, with each effect calculated and nothing left to
chance. He aimed at specific forms and tonalities, moving
from white to black, while touching upon the entire spec
trum of intermediary grays. In 1922 his first exhibition
Photography as Art 195
 of abstract paintings and photograms was held in Der
Sturm, the avant-garde gallery in Berlin. Walter Gropius,
the founder of the Bauhaus, visited the exhibition and
invited Moholy to teach at his state school in Weimar.
Moholy accepted and in the spring of 1923 he joined
an illustrious teaching staff that included Paul Klee, Jo
hannes Inen, and Oskar Schlemmer. His ideas became
pan of the Bauhaus spirit and ultimately had a decisive
influence on modem art.
Moholy was a painter, sculptor, film maker, and pho
tographer with a particular interest in the prol'llems of ,i

light and color. He made experimental films, the most

famous of which is significantly titled Light-play, black Mohaly-Nagy experi
white-gray. In 1 9 3 3 , after the Nazis came to power, he mented with cameraless
photography at the same
emigrated to Amsterdam, then to London, where he con time as but independently of
tinued his experiments with color film and produced Man Ray. There was noth
posters and documentary films. He also began to experi ing automatic about
Moholy-Nagy's light plays,
ment with Plexiglas in his three-dimensional paintings, which were carefully calcu
which he called 'space modulators.' From 1937 on, as lated to reproduce the many
director of the New Bauhaus in Chicago, he had a con gradations of light and
shadow possible with three
siderable influence on the American artistic scene. He dimensional objects (above:
constructed mobiles and other kinetic sculptures and Self-portrait photogram,
continued ro spend a large part of his time on light ex profile, 1922; opposite:
Photogram, 192.2).
periments. He died of leukemia in Chicago at the age of
fifty-one in 1946.
After a century of debate over the artistic value of
photography, Moholy put the question in its proper per
c;- spective. 'The old quarrel between anists and photogra
, phers concerning whether photography is an an is a false

problem. It is not a question of replacing painting with

photography, but of clarifying the relations between pho
tography and contemporary painting, and showing that
the development of technology out of the industrial rev
olution has materially contributed to the rise of new
forms of optic creation.' 160 Until MohoIy's time, inter

pretations of photography had been influenced by aes

thetic and philosophical ideas relating to painting. Now

I96 Photography & Society

it was time to recognize the special laws of photography.
Light in itself must be considered a creator of forms,
and photography and film must be judged from this new
point of view. Photography opens up new perspectives.
It can freeze fleeting light and shadow on a piece of paper,
even without the use of intervening equipment. It can
reveal the beauty of the negative image.
In his 1938 book New Vision, Moholy explained his
theoty of light gradation and his discovety of new angles
and perspective which corresponded to modem machine
technology. Photography is subject to its own laws, in
dependent of the opinions of art critics. These laws will
be the only valid measurement of its future value. What
is important is our participation in new experiences of
space. Thanks to photography, mankind has acquired
the power to view his surroundings with new eyes. A
photograph's value cannot be measured from an aesthetic
point of view alone; it must also be judged by the human
and social intensity of its visual representation. The pho
tograph is not simply a means of discovering reality, be
cause nature seen through the camera is different from
nature seen with the human eye. The camera influences
our way of seeing and creates a 'new vision.' 161
Moholy's ideas have greatly influenced social theorists,
notably Marshall Mcluhan, as well as two generations
of photographers, many of whom do not even know his
name. Just as Freud's discoveries have molded our habits
of judging certain human reacrions-the idea of a 'Freudi
an slip' seems natural to us today-so the ideas ofMoholy
Nagy have become inseparable from our way of seeing.
To his contemporaries in 1925 his 'new vision' seemed
a utopia, but today we are familiar with his vocabulaty
and ideas as they have been realized in contemporaty art.
Photography's place among the graphic arts is no long
er in dispute. Moholy has rightfully shown that it has
its own aesthetic. Its artistic decline toward the end of
the last centuty resulted from an error of judgment on

198 Photography & Society

the part of those photographetS who wanted to imitate
painting.
Today there are movements in painting that use tech
nical processes borrowed from photography. It is no
longer a matter of sticking a photograph in the middle
of a painting, as the cubists and surrealists had done,
but one of painting with the eyes of a camera. It is not
surprising then that the public which crowds into the
exhibitions of the photorealists takes them for copies
of photographs. (This school has little do to with those
conceptual artists who also use photographs as a means
of expression, but with very different techniques and
intentions.)
PaintetS have used photographs as documents since
the camera was invented, but for the first time we see
paintetS plagiatizing the photograph. It might even be
asserted that, thanks to this .school of painting which be
gan with the photo realists, photography itself has found
greater prominence.
A certain distance in time is always needed to pick
out the superior talents among the multitude of artists
in each generation. It took at least thirty yeats for the
great photographetS of the twenties and thirties to gain
recognition as the mastetS of visual exploration they were.
Thanks to their talent, photography has been revived as
a valid means of artistic expression. Some had back
grounds in photojournalism, others in a movement called
'The New Objectivity,' but each had a different way of
interpreting the environment, colored by their own ex
periences. The majority of them, living in a Europe which
was tom apart by social crimes, the Spanish Civil War,
and the Second World War, found their subjects in the
street. For the Americans, who had suffered in their own
way during the Depression, a more introspective vision
seemed more valid.
Today we realize that this generation gave us the pi
oneetS of modem photography. Late in the sixties, a new

Photography as Art 199

generation of photographers began searching for a dif
ferent means of photographic expression. They experi
mented with sequences and the juxtaposition of images
in an effort to evoke personal memories and extremely
intimate views of the problems of contemporary society.
The photograph will always remain a document, but the
interests of this 'New Wave' point out photography's
vitality.
Despite the myriad masterpieces of the past centuries,
contemporary painters remain undaunted, and rightfully
dream of creating new forms. Similarly, thousands of
professional photographers aspire to new directions. To
day photography is entering the museums with the ap
proval of those whose profession it is to preserve art.
On their walls, photography has recaptured the artistic
aura that it once possessed. By contrast, certainly what
most gives photography its special relevance today is that
it continues to provide a means of expression for mil
lions of amateurs.

200 Photography & Society

Amateur Photography

Amateur photography has been in existence since the

invention of the camera, but it was only in 1888, with
George Eastman's introduction of the first Kodak, that
amateurism made headway. Priced at $25, the Kodak
was loaded with a roll of 100 exposures. Once the film
was exposed, the unopened camera was to be sent to the
Rochester factory, where the film was developed and
printed, the camera reloaded and the lot returned to the
sender, all for $10.'62 Many amateur models have
appeared both in America and Europe since then. During
the last few years, cameras and film have undergone revo
lutionary improvements, but Kodak was the first to ex
ploit the mass-market potential.
Several decades ago traveling was the privilege of the
well-to-do. Today, thanks to leisure time, paid vacations,
and improved methods of transportation, millions of
people travel each year. For the affluent society, auto
mobiles and airplanes are no longer a luxury.
In 1972, many millions of tourists traveled around
the world, invading famous capitals, exotic sites, beach
es, forests, and mountains. Twenty countries in twenty
days,' advertised a large tourist agency selling package
tours. Like migrating birds, tourists travel in groups.
During the summer months they are everywhere, sprint
ing around historical monuments while long lines of
buses wait for them. Modem tourists speak in many lan
guages and do not know each other, but they all have
in common the cameras hanging from their necks.

201
 Everything is preplanned on organized tours. The bus
stops at places chosen ahead of time, spots where photo
graphs should be taken, such as Notre-Dame in Paris,
the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and the pyramids in
Egypt. The next day will bring other monuments, other
sites, other countries. The tourists have just enough time
to get out of the bus and snap the shutter. They be
come passive objects transported from place to place. If
the human mind has limitations and cannot absorb so
many new impressions in so short a time without confus
ing them, no matter. Once home, the photographs will

202 Photography & Society

Certainly no amateur,
Henri Cartier-Bresson
cleverly linked amateur
photography to tourism in
this picture. Tourists, like
many amateur photog
raphers, used the camera
primarily to capture and
preserve memories rather
than for artistic or com
mercial purposes.
be developed and the visits will be remembered. There
is no need to look-the camera sees for you.
Today the photographic industry flourishes for legions
of amateurs. Its rate of development is among the fast
est in the world. According to the ' 974/75 Wolfman
Report on the photographic industry, American amateurs
took over 6 billion pictures that year, 87 percent in color.
In 1974, total world revenues for the industry were esti
mated at $ 5 .7 billion. Americans make up 42 percent of
the world market, and each American family spent $ , 5
on photographic products for the year. Among seventeen
leisure activities, photography ranked fourth, after listen
ing to the stereo, fishing, and camping.
In France, there were 10.3 million cameras in use in
1974. That means close to one out of every two French
adults is a photographer. Photography has become a
popular hobby today. We can predict that this infatua
tion Vvrith the camera will grow in years to come, and by
1980 an estimated 300 million tourists will be traveling
around the world taking pictures. Large companies in the
photographic industry are expanding their research to
satisfy the growing demand which will, of course, lead
to higher profits.
During the last decade, in fact, technology has made
spectacular progress. In '963 Kodak brought out their
new 'lnstamatic' line of cameras. The majority of ama
teurs, for whom photography is little more than a means
of keeping pictorial souvenirs of family members, friends,
and travels, enthusiastically adopted these inexpensive,
easy-to-operate cameras. Between 1963 and 1972, close
to 60 million Instamaties were sold throughout the world.
Amateurs prefer them to the more sophisticated and ex
pensive German and Japanese models. In 1971 only one
million Japanese cameras were sold in the United States,
a figure representing just 10 percent of the total sale
in America. German cameras are more expensive and sell
even less readily.
Amateur Photography 203
 In 1972 Kodak took another giant step by introducing
a new line of Instamatics small enough to carry in one's
t
pocket like a wallet or a package of cigarettes. Calling
it 'a revolutionary change,' Time magazine declared:
'The era of pocket photography is here. . . . '63 The model
will meet the new needs of those amateurs who travel

more and more with less and less baggage.'
The pocket camera is nothing new. Minox, another
pocket camera, has been manufactured in Germany for
many years. But the tiny film used in the Minox was
incapable of producing first-class prints. Above all, there
was no color film available for the reduced size. Kodak
>
researchers developed a film for the pocket camera that
could produce as good a color print as any made from
larger format film. In 1 974, 87 percent of the film bought >

by amateurs was for color impressions. Within the fore

seeable future, color may replace black-and-white film
entirely.
>
Color film for amateurs is a recent development. In the
mid-1930S Kodak introduced Kodachrome and Agfa Ag
>
facolor. Few amateurs used either because the film, in
addition to being much more expensive than black and
>
white, generally produced slides requiring the use of a
projector. Color reproductions on paper were tremen
dously expensive. With few exceptions, professionals in
Europe did not use color either because most magazines
were not yet equipped for color printing. It was only
after World War II, toward the end of the forties, that
European magazines began to print color pages regular
ly, thereby stimulating the public's interest in color pho
tography. In 1949 in America, and in 1952 in France,
Kodak introduced Kodacolor, a color negative film from
which good prints could be made inexpensively. From
then on, color photography took off.
The pocket Instamatic weighs only 3 ounces. Because
its film is 3 0 percent smaller than that used in ordinary

Instamatics, it requires 30 percent less manufacturing

204 Photography & Society
material. By selling the new film for the same price, Kodak
dears a profit of an additional 30 percent on each roll
sold. Wonderful business! The New York Stock Ex
change's response, the barometer of American industrial
enterprises, was volatile. During the first months of 1972.,
following the announcement of the pocket camera, East
man Kodak shares rose 4 1 .5 points to $ 1 1 3 - 5 -
I n 1972. Kodak was the sole manufacturer of the new
i
machines for developing and making pr nts from the
pocket camera. The new projectors for amateurs who
preferred to make color slides from their Instamatic neg
atives were also made by Kodak. In 1 974, Kodak could
declare a net profit of $62.9,519,000 afrer taxes. Despite
inflation, operating costs, the shortage of certain materi
als, the energy crisis, the company's products et!joy re
markable success. One of the company's ambitions is to
open up the Chinese market. Perhaps the time is not far
off whet! 800 million Chinese will be brandishing pock
et Instamatics instead of the Little Red Book. Kodak,
the largest manufacturer of film in the United States,
derives 80 percent of its profits from the sale of film,
but it is not the only colossus of the photographic in
dustry. Polaroid is another American giant.
Three months afrer Kodak's heavily advertised an
nouncement of its new pocket Instamatic, Polaroid cre
ated a sensation by introducing its own pocket camera,
the SX-70. Larger and heavier than the Instamatic, the
SX-70 is nevertheless capable of developing and produc
ing a finished print in just a few seconds. This miraculous
camera was invented by the scientist Edwin Robert Land.
Born in Bridgeport, Connecricut, in 1 909, Land studied
physics and originally made a name for himself during
a colloquium at Harvard in 1933, where he presented a
new theory based on his experiments in light polariza
tion. His scientific work, induding penetrating studies
on color, is highly valued and has earned him honorary
degrees from eleven universities and countless distinc-

Amateu, Photography 2.05

tions from all over the world. His research experiments
in light polarization with new materials led to the con
struction of a new camera to which he gave the name
Polaroid. As to how Land conceived of constructing such
a camera, in an article dated 26 June 1972, Time maga
zine gave this explanation: 'While vacationing in Santa
Fe with his family in 194 3, Land had his three-year-old
daughter Jennifer pose for some pictUIes. The child asked
how long it would be before she could see them. Land,
who had been interested in photography since childhood,
immediately began wondering how photos might be de
veloped and printed right inside the camera. He now
claims jokingly that by the time he and Jennifer returned
from their walk, he had solved all the problems "except
for the ones that it has taken from 1943 to 1972 to solve.'"
In 1947 Land demonstrated his invention before a
group of incredulous scientists. The first Polaroid was
put on sale in America the following year. Weighing four
and-a-half pounds and priced at $90, the new camera
printed sepia pictures. The principle involved placing an
exposed negative in contact with a sensitized paper and
then passing the two sheets together through a pair of
rollers. The sheets emerged from the camera in a few
minutes. Nothing remained but to separate the papers
and spread a small amount of liquid on the finished
print to fix it.
In 1950, Land added an automatic device for setting
exposure time, and in 1963 he offered color film. The
latest of the Polatoid cameras, the SX-70, is based on
an entirely new process. Land invested hundreds of mil

t
lions of dollars in the project and built new factories for
mass producing the new camera. Its novelty lies in the
automatic development of the image right under the pho

l
tographer's eyes without leaving any waste. (For our af
fluent society with its agonizing waste disposal problems,
this was an important consideration.) The latest Polaroid
achievement was made public in 1978. It is a camera

t
206 Photography & Society

I
l
that does not even have to be forused. To detennine the
distance of obj ects from the camera, it uses a system of
ultrasonic sound. The company is ranked among the fast
est growing industries in the United States. Polaroid stock
purchased in 1938 for $1,000 would be worth $3.6
million today. '64
At present, Kodak and Polaroid, the two rival giants
of the American photographic industry, jointly face even
more dangerous competition from Japanese camera
manufacturers. Since the end of the Second World War,
Japan has devoted itself wholeheartedly to the photo
graphic and motion picture markets. In less than fifreen
years, the Japanese have succeeded in becoming the
world's largest manufacturers in these areas, just as they
have excelled in the manufacture of electron microscopes,
sewing machines, and motorcycles. In 1972 there were
over a hundred Japanese companies specializing in the
production of cameras and equipment. Between 1966
and 1970, camera production alone had risen from 3.3
to 5.8 million. Fiiry-six percent of total production is
exported, mostly to North America, followed by Europe.
Supported by funds from large Japanese firms and with
the help of computers, thousands of techuical specialists
are devoted to perfecting complicated zoom and auto
matic focusing lenses. In order to remain competitive in
their pricing, they are obliged constantly to improve their
products. The Japanese compauies, like those in America
and Europe, are merging, creating enormous industrial
complexes as the larger firms absorb the smaller. As labor
has become increasingly expensive, manufacturers have
begun to set up new factories abroad where labor is less
expensive, for example in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Japanese compauies are still offering unbeatable prices
at present, but the specter of Chinese competition is al
ready looming on the horizon. Just as the Japanese start
ed out in the photographic industry by copying German
cameras, the Chinese are now copying Japanese cameras.

Amateur Photography 2.07

In 1972, Seagull, a Chinese manufacturer, developed an
exact copy of the Minolta SRT-101 that sold at a price
that undercut all competition_
Japanese amateur photographers are legion_ Unlike
Western amateurs, they buy the most sophisticated cam
eras because they are cheap in Japan, within everyone's
price range_ Eleven Japanese periodicals are devoted to
photography, and 10,000 photographers graduate each
year from Japanese schools. ls
Cameras constructed with the help of electronic equip
ment are becoming increasingly sophisticated inside. Yet,
even a child can quickly learn to use them, since all set
tings are automatically self-regulating. From the techni
cal point of view, no one can ruin a picture. This explains
in part the tremendous public interest in photography.
The growing monotony of everyday life is another factor.
Lives have become regimented, dominated by a techno
structure that allows less and less initiative. In the days
of the craftsman, a man could still find satisfaction in
expressing his personality and his hopes in his work. To
day he is reduced to little more than a cog in one wheel
of an increasingly mechanized society. Photography has
attracted so many enthusiasts in part because it gives
them the illusion of being creative. Numerous amateur
clubs and photography magazines exist all over the world.
lime-Life recently published a series of lavishly illustrat
ed books on photographic subjects, which was translated
into several languages and sold throughout the world by
the millions .Finally, the massive advertising campaigns by
the photographic industry have contributed significantly
to the increased number of amateur photographers.
America is the most advanced technological society in
the world. It was in America, toward the end of the I
fifties, that a movement began which made headway
among the more sophisticated amateur photographers.
They began to buy up the most complex cameras, the
Leica, Nikon F, even Hasselblad and Linhof. GIs return-

208 Photography & Society

ing from Vietnam brought back inexpensive Japanese
cameras. Attics, garages, and bathrooms were refur
bished as darkrooms and filled with expensive equip
ment. Galleries devoted entirely to photography have
opened in all important American cities. In 1977 there
were forty-eight galleries in New York alone that or
ganized exhibitions or sold photographs to the public.
Until recently, collectors have been exclusively interested
in the works of nineteenth-century photographers. Now
a growing number of collectors are also drawn to con
temporary photographs. Artworks are selling at such
high prices that young people in patticular do not have
the means to purchase them. The price of a photograph,
on the other hand, is rarely more than an original litho
graph. Columns on photography have begun to appear
in most important newspapers, and the New York Times
publishes an entire page on photographic exhibits and
galleries every Sunday. Since the spring of 1975, criticism
on photographic exhibitions has appeared in the Times
art column, thereby publicly consecrating photography's
place among the graphic arts. Besides the specialized
magazines that appear every month, articles on photog
raphy and its importance as an art appear in such maga
zines as the New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, and the New
York Review of Books. Even the very serious Wall Street
Journal, which deals with finance, carries some articles on
photography. Moreover, speculation in photographs has
caught on with financial advisors, who encourage their
clients to buy photographs as investments.
In 1975, there were more than 400 photographic ex
hibitions across the country. Public sales of photographic
collections are held at the prestigious Parke-Bernet Gal
lery in New York, the Hotel Drouot and the Palais Gal
liera in Paris, at Sotheby's and Chtistie's in London, and
at the important auctions in Cologne, Germany. As with
sales of paintings and rare books, catalogs are prepared.
In 197 l one sale brought receipts of more than $ 3 mil-

Amateur Photography 2.09

lion. At a sale in February 1 9 7 5 where twentieth-century
photographs were being sold for the first time, Alfred
Stieglitz's photogravure 'The Steerage; which he con
sidered his best picture, sold for $4,500. His magazine

Camera Work ( 1 903 - 1 9 I 7) , in fifty volumes (incom
plete), went for $24,000. The photographs of Man Ray,

Ansel Adams, Brassai, Walker Evans, and Margaret
Bourke-White were among those that sold for high prices,

sometimes more than $ I ,000 for an original print.
Important photographic collections exist in many
American museums. At the Museum of Modem Art in
New York, a department devoted to photographic his
tory organizes exhibitions of contemporary work. Other
American museums have followed their example. The

International Museum of Photography in Rochester,
housed in the large private mansion previously owned
by George Eastman, is devoted solely to photography.
In the fall of ' 974, all the newspapers carried long arti
cles on Cornell Capa's International Center of Photogra
phy (I.c.P.), the first museum in New York City devoted
entirely to photography. Since the beginning of the seven
ties, annual symposiums have taken place in the United
States and Europe for curators, critics, and photographic
specialists to study methods of collecting and classifying
photographs as well as many other issues concerning the
medium.
The importance accorded to photography in the United
States is reflected in the schools. Today an estimated
80,000 students study the subject in 6 7 5 schools, col
leges, and other institutions, 177 university programs
among them. It is a field in which diplomas range from
simple certificates to the highest university degrees. In
' 9 7 ' New York University offered the first doctoral de
gree in photography.
Other signs of photography's public success are the
hundreds of books published each year and the popularity
of photographic posters. A few publishers specialize in

210 Photography & Society

Following the lead of John
Szarkowski, director of the
Photography Depanment
of the Museum of Modern
An, the directors of many
museums began to recog
nize photography as an an
form wonhy of special at
tention. The George East
man House's International
Museum of Photography
has one of the richest early
photographic collections in
existence.
limited edition portfolios of lavishly displayed original
prints, most including some dozen photographs, with
prices varying from a few hundred to six thousand dol
lars. These limited editions generally consist of thirty to
sixty signed and numbered prints.
More than ten years after the photography boom start
ed in America, European interest is beginning to extend
beyond a limited group of professionals. As in America,
the growing number of amateur photographers has trig
gered the change. Specialized galleries have opened in
Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London, Milan, Basel, and Amster
dam. Publishers who had been hostile to the idea of pho
tographic books because of previous disappointments
are changing their minds. Gallety collections devoted en
tirely to photography are beginning to appear. In 1978,
Amateur Photography 211
 IJ
!

the French government established a National Founda Fonner director and curator
of George Eastman House's
tion in Lyons to promote the photographic medium as
photography collection,
a fine art. Since the late sixties European museums have Beaumont Newhall (left) is
been exhibiting photography regularly. shown here reviewing pho
tographs with professional
The Photokina is the most important fair in the pho
photographer Yosef Karsh
tographic industry. Begun in '950, it is held every other (right) at George Eastman
year in Cologne, Germany. In September 1978 it reached House.

gigantic proportions. 'Arriving by car, train, bus, charter

plane, the visitors were so numerous that it was impos
sible to find hotel accommodations in Cologne without
reservations made months in advance. Thousands of visi
tors had to sleep in neighboring cities while others camped
in trucks along the Rhine. What a- success!' wrote a cor
respondent for a French newspaper who felt lost in the
immensity of the exhibition. With so many countries rep-

2I2 Photography & Society

resented, it was a Tower of Babel. He continued, 'Pho
tography and film making no longer remain the domain
of artists and professionals. Everything is so easy that the
consumer quickly uses up dozens of feet of film without
realizing it. It is an expensive habit, very profitable for
the manufacturers.' In former years, many exhibitors
had unfortunate experiences. Their stands were stormed
by crowds of amateur enthusiasts who came just to look,
and who scared off serious buyers. The Photokina's or
ganization had to be changed. Since 1974 cultural events
and the many exhibitions of photographs have taken
place outside the commercial fairgrounds, attracting
many thousands more visitors than the industrial exhibi
tions themselves.

AmateuT Photography 2I 3

Photography and society:
Marc Riboud's camera re
corded a panoramic sea of
faces that even D. O. Hill
would not have envisioned.
Both understood, however,
the camera's potential to
document and at times in
fluence the social, political,
and cultural environment in
which they lived.
Conclusion
During the Renaissance it was said of a cultivated per
son that he had 'a good nose.' Today we say that he has
'vision; for sight is now the sense most often called upon.
A picture is easy to understand and accessible to every
one. Its most special characteristic is its immediate emo
tional effect. It leaves little time for reflection or for the
reasoning a conversation or the reading of a book re
quires. This immediacy is both its strength and its danger.
Thanks to photography, the number of images the aver
age individual confronts has been multiplied a million
fold. The world is no longer evoked. It is directly rep
resented_
The Vietnam War was sadly symbolized by a photo
graph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a small girl of nine, severely
burned by a napalm attack, fleeing with other children on
a South Vietnamese road. It was printed all over the
world, eliciting horror and hatred for war in a fashion
infinitely more powerful than dozens of pages written on
the subject would have been. lbe photograph's effect
was so immediate that it was reproduced in the 29
December 1972 issue of Life among the most memorable
photographs of the year. To cushion the emotional shock,
Life printed a color portrait of the little Vietnamese girl
smiling along with it, with the explanation that Kim Phuc
had been in a Saigon hospital for fifteen weeks receiving
skin transplants and physical therapy. 'But the war was
not done yet with the little girl,' reported Life. 'Incredibly.
South Vietnamese planes struck again in November, this
215
time demolishing Kim Phuc's home . . . [the napalm
attack was also the result of an error on the army's part].
Kim Phuc returned again to her home, which has now
been partially rebuilt. Her scars are healed, and she is
going to school again. Her memories lie hidden behind an
easy, cheerful smile.' Despite the reassuring photograph,
the picrure of Phan Thi Kim Phuc tearing off her burning
clothes and runuing naked on the road will remain for
ever engraved in the memories of all who have seen it.
c:::-Photography's tremendous power of persuasion in ad
dressing the emotions is consciously exploited by those
J:
who use it as a means of manipulation n his book Con
fessions ofan Advertising Man, Davi<l"Ogilvy, one of the
best-known advertising men in America, recommends
that his colleages suggest the use of photography to their
clients in selling their products because it 'represents
reality, whereas drawings represent fantasy, which is less
believable.' Yet we have seen many examples of the ways
in which photographs can be altered and manipulated, to
carry the opposite meaning of the original intention.
Millions of amateurs, both consumers and producers of
photography, who imagine they have captured reality by
snapping the shutter and rediscovering it in their nega
tives, do not doubt the truth of the photograph. For them,
the photograph is irrefutable evidence.
It is this false belief in the objectivity of the image
that gives the photograph its enormous power and ex
plains its widespread use in advertising. The advertising
industry has hired the 'depth boys' to explore human
reactions to ads. Psychologists are aware that the uncon
scious is filled with symbolic images that have a profound
influence on behaviour. A few years ago, some media
executives sought to exploit this faculty with 'subliminal'
advertising. Images flashed at a thirtieth of a second, not
consciously seen by the viewer, were inserted in movies
to sell products. This diabolical form of advertising has
since been outlawed as an immoral violation of human

2 I 6 Photography & Sodety

rights. If it takes only a thitrieth of a second to influence
a man's will, it is easy to understand the strength of the
image and its drawing power as a seller of both goods and
ideas.
Not only the so-called liberal capitalist countries but
also the dictatorships, both left- and right-wing, have
exploited photography's persuasive power. The photo
graph of the chief of state carried over the crowds in
parades and demonstrations, or decorating state offices,
is for some the symbol of the father and for others the
Orwellian 'Big Brother.' It inspires love or hate, con
fidence or fear. Its intrinsic value is based on its power to
arouse one's emotions.
Nineteen-sevenry-six marked the sesquicentennial of
photography. In this book, I have tried to trace its his
tory. Photography began modesdy as a means of self
representation but very quickly became an all-powerful
industry that has penetrated every aspect of society. As
a means of reproducrion, photography has democratized
art by making it available to everyone; but at the same
time, it has changed our view of art. Used to externalize
a creative urge, it is not always a simple copy of nature.
Otherwise 'good' photographs would not be so rare.
Among the millions of pictures published every day in
periodicals and in books, only a few go beyond simple
representation. Photography has helped man discover
the world from different angles. It has condensed space
without it, we would never have seen the surface of the
moon. It has democratized man's knowledge, bringing
people closer together. But it has also played a danger
ous role as an instrument of manipulation used to create
needs, to sell goods, and to mold minds.
The invention of photography marks the starting point
of the mass media, which play an all-powerful role today
as means of communication. Without photography there
would never have been movies or television. Sitting in
front of the 'tube' daily has become a drug without which

Condusion 217
millions of people could not exist. Although the first in
ventor of photography, Nicephore Niepce, tried desper
ately to have his invention recognized, his efforts were
in vain and he died in misery. Few people know his name
today. But photography, which he discovered, has be
come the most common language of our civilization.

2.I 8 Photography & Society

Notes

I. Wilhelm Waetzold, Die lUmst des POTtTiits, Leipzig, I ')OIl, p. 57

2. Vidal, 'Memoire de la seancedu 15 novembre 1868 dela sociere
...tisrique de Marseille,' Bulletin de /a sociitefrrmt;lJise dephoto
graphie. 1871, pp. 37. 38, 40.
3. Cf. Rene Hennequin, Etlm. Quenedey, portraitiste au physiono
trace, Troyes, 192.6.
4. Cf. Cromer, 'Le secret du physionotrace,' BuUetin de la socrete
archiologique. historique et artistique, 'Le Vieux Papier,' 26th
year, October 192.5-
5. Cf. Cabinet des estampes de la Bibliotheque nationaie, Paris.
6. Cf. Gonard's advertisement in Journal de Paris, 2.8 July 1788.
7. Cf. Quenedey's advertisement in Journal de Paris, 21 July 1788.
8. 0. Vivarez, Le pbysionotTace.
9 Cf. Journal de Paris, 2I July 1788.
10. Cf. Moniteur universel, 16 June 1839-
1 I . Jean Jaures, Histoire socialiste, 'Le regne de Louis-Philippe.'
12.. Cf. E. Levasseur, Histoire des clllse s s ouvrieres et de l'industrie
en France, Paris, 1903.
13 Jean Jaures, op. cit.
14. Cf. E. Levasseur, Histoiredu commercedelafrance, Paris, 1911.
15. Ci. Karl Marx, Le IS Brumaire de Louis Bonaparte.
16. 0. Karl Mannhei ldeologie und Utopie, Bonn: F. Cohen,
192.9
17. Cf. Karl Marx, op. cit.
18. Cf. Session of 1839 (Nouvelle Legislative), Paris, 1839.
19. Cf. Bibliographie politique et pariementaire des deputes (Guide
des electeurs) by one of the editors of Le Messager, Paris, 1839,
P 145
2.0. Cf. Victor Fouque, 'Niq,ce, la verite sur I'invention de la photo-
graphie,' Chalon-sur-Saone, 1867.
2.1. Ibid.
22.. Letter from Niepce to Lemaitre, 23 October 182.8.
2.3. Cf. Arthur Chevalier, Etude sur Ia vie et les travaux scientifiques
de Charles Chevalier, Paris, 1862.
2.4. On 8 December 1827, Niq,re had already tried. unsuccessfully
to publicize his invention in a speech to the London Royal Scr
ciery.

2I9
2.5. Cf. Isidore Niepce, Histoirede la decouverte improprement nom-
mee daguerreotype, Paris, 1841. ..
2.6. <There is much talk about Daguerre's invention. Nothing is more
amusing than the explanations of this wonder proposed by our
scientists of the salon. Daguerre should be reassured that his
secret will not be stolen. . . . 1his discovery is troly worthy of
great admiration, but we do not understand anything about it.
It has been overexplained to us.' Lettres parisiennes, 12 January
1839, by the vicomte de Launais. Oeuvres completes ofMme
Emile de Girardin, vol. IV, pp. 2.89-1.90.
1.7. Gay-Lussac, Rapport de lasamcedu 30 juillet de /a o,ambredes
Pairs Historiqueet description des procedes du daguerreotype et
du diorama, concerning Daguerre's Paris, r839.
1.8. Cf. Moniteur universel, 16 June 1839.
1.9. Cf. Comptes rendus des seances de l'AClJdemie des sciences, sec
ond semester. 1839.
Another example of state support of new and useful inventions
is the subsidies granted to the railroads. These were in the hands
of a few members of the financial aristocracy. The Chambers
voted for the authorization to build the railroads. including the
length of the concession. the dividends to be paid. and the state
subsidies. h should not be forgotten that the representatives of
the financial aristocracy had a decisive influence in the Chambers
and that it was in their interest to realize these projects (parle
mentary debates, 182.... -47).
;0. TheAcademy<justreceivedtheapprovalofthemostdistinguished
and honored English scientists, most notably Herschel, Robinson,
Forbes, Wats., Brisbane.' Comptes rendvs des seances de tACIJ
Jemie des sciences, 15 June 18;9.
31. Comptes rendus des seances de l'Academie des sciences. 19 Au
gust 1839, vol. IX, pp. 2.57-66.
;1.. "We shall soon see beautiful prints that were once found only
in the living rooms of rich amateurs, decorate even the most
humble residence of the worker and the peasant; La Revue
frant;aise, 1839.
33. Cf. Comptesrendusdesseances de I'Acadi:mie des sciences, 1839.
34. Ibid.
35. Cf. Le Feuilleton du sieck, 1839; Ie Feuilleton national, 1839;
Ia Gazette de France, 1839; and similar publications.
36. Cf. Daguerre, Historique et description des procedes du daguer
reotype et du diorama. Paris, 1839:
37. Cf. Comptes rentlus des seances de fAcademie des sciences, sec
ond semester, I839'
38. "The photogenic images, as delightful as they are, leave something
to be desired, especially the pom.i".' E. Foucaud, Physiologie
de l'industrie fran(jl1ise, Paris, 1844. p. 179.
39 Gaudin and Leresbours. Derniers perfectionnements apportes au
daguerreotype, Paris. 1841..
40. Richard Rudisill. Mirror Image. the Influence of the Daguerreo-

HO Photography & Society

 type on American Society, Albuquerque, N.M.: University of
New Mexico Press, 1972.
41. Cf. Walter Benjamin, 'Petite histoire de la photographie' in
Poesie et revolution, editions Denoe1, Paris, 1971, published for
the first time in Literarische Welt, nos. 38-40, Berlin, 193I.
42. Ibid.
43. 'Any declasse or classless person was setting himself up as a
photographer: the office clerk who had come in late on collec
tion day, the coffeehouse tenor who had lost his voice, the con
cierge who fancied bimseH an artist-they all called themselves
artistic! Painters and sculptors who had not made it flocked to
photography. . . . Nadar, Quand fetais pbotographe. p. 195

44. 'I was born at the beginning of that age of innocence when a
cabinet minister stole no more than 100,000 francs At the
. .

time when it was considered distinguished among the lower mid

dle class to have their children in mourning for the duc de Berry,
1 was among those in mourning.' Ibid., pp. 278-84.
45. Cf. Pierre I..arousse, Grand dictionna;,e du XIX" siecle, Paris:
Administration du grand dictionnaire uoiverse 1866-90.
46. Cf. E. Levasseur, Histoire du commerce de la France, 'La bour
geoisie au pouvoir,' Paris: A. Rousseau. 19II-I2.
47. Around 1845, the principal writers of la Boheme collaborated
on Ie Corsa;re-Satan. Under the leadership of Arsene Houssaye,
this literary newspaper became an opposition paper, both famous
and often attacked.
48. 'The truth is that until 1848 our office was usually located in the
cozy cafes where we arrived with hearty appetites at nine o'dock
in the morning, not to leave until midnight.' Champfleury, SOII
venirs et portraits de jeunesse. Paris: E. Dentu. 1872. p. 122.
49. Cf. Histoire de Murger, pour serv;, a rbistoire de la vraie Bo
heme par trois buveurs d'eau, Paris: Nadar, Lalioux, Noel, 1862.
'Boheme is a word popular in 1840. In the language of the day,
it was synonymous with artist or student, pleasure-seeking, joy
ous, unmindful of tomorrow, lazy, and rowdy.' Gabriel Guil
lemot, La Boheme, Paris, 1868, pp. 7-8.
50. 'Industrial literature has succeeded in silencing criticism and in
OCOJpying an almost unrontradictory position as if it existed
alone As a result, most newspapers, even those who would
. . .

willingly be classified as puritanical, have spawned an array of

violations and a purely mercenary management who foments lit
erary quarrels and really lives off them.' Sainte-Beuve, Revue des
deux mondes, 1 July 1839, 'De la Iitterature industrielle,' pp.
678, 68I.
51. 'Money, money, it is impossible to calculate how much it is the
nerve-center and god of taday's literature: the effects of its twist
ing and turning can be detected even in the most minute details.
If a clever writer occasionally indulges in an empty, overblown,
endless style with sudden bursts of important neologisms or sci
entific expressions taken from God knows where, it is because he

Notes 221
 learned early how to build up his phrasing, to triple and quad
ruple it (pro nummis) while giving to it the least amount of
thought possible: Sainte-Beuve, Revue des deux montles, 1843,
<Sur la situation en litterature; p. 14.
52.. <La Boheme is a phase of artistic life, it is the preface to the Acade
my, the hospital or the morgue: d. Histoire de Murger.
53. Theophile Gautier, Camille Rogier, Gerard de Nerval, Ourliac,
Celestin Nanteuil, etc. belonged to <Ia Jenne France:
54. Murger was the son of a concierge-tailor; Champfleury, the son
of a secretary at the Lyon town hall; Barbara, the son of a modest
music salesman; Bouvin, the son of a rural policeman; Delveau,
the son of a tanner in the Paris suburb of Saint-Marcel; and
Courbet, the son of a peasant.
5 5 . <It is very different among artists: the word bourgeois isno longer
a name, meaning or qualification. It is an insult, and the most
vulgar to be heard in the artist's srudio. An art srudent would
prefer a thousand times over to be called a scoundrel of the
worst sort than to be called a bourgeois.' Henri Monnier, Phy
siologie du bourgeois, Paris, 1842., p. 9.
56. Cf. Nadar, Pierrot ministre, pantomime, 1847.
57. Told by Nadae's son to the author.
58. Cf. Biographie nah"onale des contemporains under tbe general
editorship of Ernest Glasser, 1878.
59. Told by Nadar's son to the author.
60. <When I conceived of the idea of the Nadar pantheon containing
a thousand portraits in four consecutive pages-men of letters,
dramatists, painters. sculptors and musicians- I was on intimate
tenns with aU the illustrious men of the period: Nadar, Quand
j'etais photographe, pp. 2.4[-42..
61. Walter Benjamin, <Petite histoire de la photographie.'
62.. Nadar was also the first to think of photographing with artificial
light. In 1860, he was thus able to photograph the catacombs
of Paris.
63. <From the first days of the following spring in 1856, I obtained
on first try a dozen pictures and a negative of the Bois de Boulogne
with a piece of the Arc de Triomphe, views of the Ternes, Bati
goolles, Montmartre.' Nadar, op. cit.
64. <Here they inflate a tied-up balloon and I see Nadar running
around in a naval officer's cap and a military raincoat.' Journal
des Goncourt, Sarurday, 19 November 1870, vol. V.
65. CI. N_d_r, The Giant Balloon, London' W. S. Johnson Co.,
1863.
66. This text on D. O. Hill was published by the author in the maga
zine Verve, No. 516, edited by E. Teriade, Paris, 1939.
67. O. Ernest Lavisse, Histoire de France, Boston & New York:
D. C. Heath & Co., 1923.
68. The club included among its members the scientists de Laborde.
Ferdinand de lasteyrie, the baron 5eguier, Becquerel, the paint
ers Delacroix, Beranger, the writer Theophile Gautier, and so on.

222 Photography & Society

69 '7. Any colored printsorthoseprintsin which manual retouching
has ocwrred will also be excluded from the exhibition.' Bulletin
de la sociite fran(IJise de pbotograpbie, 25 January 19I8
70. 'Everyone knows how I suddenly became popular by inventing
the carte-de-visite which I had patented in I854.' Disderi, L'Art
de la pbotographie, Paris, published by the author in 1862,
P 146.
7 I. Disderi, Renseignements photograph;ques indispensables ii taus,
1855, p. 146.
72. Disderi, L'An de fa pbotograpbie, pp. 150, 152, 154.
73. d. Nadar, Quand j'itais photograph
74. 'Alanx paints wdl and draws wdl. Moreover, he is not expensive
and is a colorist.' Statement by Loois-Philippe quoted by Thea
phile Silvestre, Les Artistes {rant;ais, Paris: Charpentier, I878,
P 4
75. Cf. Leon Rosenthal, Du romantismeau realisme. essai sur revo
lution de fa peinture en France de r830 Ii I848, Paris, 1914.
76. Victor Fournel, Ce qu'on voit dans les rues de Paris, Paris:
A. Delahays, I858.
77. Alfred lichtwark, Die Amateurpbotograpbie, HaDe, 1894.
78. 'The bourgeois are especially frightened by the model's shadows
in which they only see what darkens and saddens the face. . . .
No half tints, but a uniformly white flesh tint with shades of
pink around the cheeks!' Fournel, op. cit., p. 390.
79. Disderi, L'Art de la pbotographie.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. Cf. Leipziger Anzeiger, 1839.
83. Cf. Courbet, Le Realisme, catalog of the exhibition and sale of
thirty-eight paintings and four drawings from the work of
G. Courbet.
84. 'A critical, analytical, synthetic and humanitarian painter, Cour
bet is an expression of the time. His work parallels Auguste
Comte's positivist philosophy and Vacherot's positivist meta
physics which claim that human law or justice is inherent to th
self
. . .' P.-j. Prudhon, Du principe de l'art et de sa destinatim
sociaie, Paris, 1865, p. 287.
85. Deleduze, Feuilleton from Le Journal des debats, 21 March
IS5!.
86. Francis Wey, Du naturalisme dans l'art; de son principe et
de ses consequences; ii propos d'un article de M. DeJecluze dans
"La Lumiere,' 6 April IS S! .
87. Taine, Philosophie de fart, p. 7.
88. Ibid., p. 10.
89. Ibid., pp. '3-"4.
90. A. de Lamanine, Cours familia de liuerature, vol. VII, xxx
VIlt' entretien, Leopold Robert, Paris, 1859, p. 43.
91. Cf. Ingres, Reponse au rapport sur !'ecole imperiale des Beaux
Arts, Paris, IS63.

Notes 223
 92. Cf. Bauddaire, Salon T859. lepublicmodemeetlaphotographie.
9}. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
95. Ddacroix, Revue des deux mondes, 15 September 1850, 21 St
year, vol. Vll, p. 1 144.
96. Ibid.
97. Comptes rendus des seances de l'Academie des sciences, 19 Au
gust 1839, vol. IX, pp. 257-266.
98. Cf. Journal de l'industrie photographique, organ of the trade-
Wlion committee on photography, January 1880.
99. Cf. Revue des deux mondes, 1 April 184I.
100. Cf. Le Moniteur de la photographie, no. 24, I March 1864.
10I. Cf. Recueil general des lois et des arren, I October 1863.
102. Andre Malraux had asked me to photograph a Mexican srulp
ture of the goddess of com for his book Le Musee imaginaire
de la sculpture montUale. ] photographed from different angles
and in changing light conditions, which made the same srulpture
appear to be several different srulptures. ] did this to prove to
him that his idea concerning a work of art changing according
to photography was altogether correct. Malraux chose one of
these reproductions for his book, but his choice was conditioned
by his own taste and his percqn:ion of this srulpture. The repro
duction of an anwork depends on the perception not only of the
photographer but of the viewer as wdl.
103. Un siecle de technique, Paris: Braun and Co.
104. Ibid.
105. Ado Kyrou, L'Aged'orde fa carte postale, Paris: Andre Balland,
1966.
106. Record photographs of the Crimean War, 1855.
'07. Paul Vanderbilt, Guide to the Specific Collections ofPrints and
Photographs in the Ubrary of Congress, Washington, D.C.,
Library of Congress, 1955. pp. 19-14 .
108. Told to the author by her father.
109. Cf. Vu, November 1935.
110. MUnchner Illustrierte Prt!S5e, no. 9. 1925.
I I I. Cf. Wilhelm Carle, Weltanschauung und Presse, Leipzig: Hirsch
feld, '9} I.
I I 2. Cf. Erich Salomon, Beri4mnte Zeitgenossen in Unbewachten Au-
genblicken, I. Stuttgart: Engelhoms Nach. I93I.
I I 3. Ibid.
114. Told to the author by Marian Schwabik.
I 15. Today. the founder ofthe Dephot Service is over 80 years old and
lives in London. where he formed a press service after the Second
World War. His office. situated on the second story of a house in
the business district of London. is filled with a jumble of photo
graphs and papers. resembling what the Dephot Service must
have looked like in the thirties. When ] arrived in London to
interview him, I found an old gentleman with a sharp look who
refused to give me the smallest bit of information. On the con-

22.4 Photography & Society

 trary, he had me sign a paper stipulating that his name would not
be menrionedin this book. But] did havethe right to refecro rum
as the 'secretary' of the Dephor Service. The 'secretary' played a
crucial role in thebistory of photojournalism. Under his influence
and thanks to his gifts as a journalist, the photographers belong
ing to this service ddined modem photojournalism. Although the
Service was financed by Alfred Marx, the 'secretary; as clever as
he was in thinking out a reportage. was not a very good busi
nessman. Some of his best photographers had to sign contracts
directly with the picture magazines in order to be paid. It was the
'secretary' who gave Raben Capa his first chance, who, like so
many others educated by the 'secretary,' later became famous.
1 16. Told to the author by Felix H. Man.
1 17. Told to the author by Felix H. Man.
II8. Muncbner Illustrierte, 192.9-1933.
1 1 9. Interview with Felix H. Man in The New York Times, 14 May
1971.
] 20. Kleine LeiC4-Chronik. Die Entwiddung dec Leica und des lOa-
systems. Ernst Leitz GmbH Wetzlar, nos. 92.-10<>-91.cR.
12.1. Told to the author by Thomas McAvoy. the Life photographer.
12.2.. The magazine Photo, no. 59. Paris, 1972..
12.}. a. Gisele Freund. The World in My Camera. New York: Dial
Press, 1974.
12..4 . Munziger-Arcbiv. Lieferung 9158, I March 1958.
12.5. Cf. Theodore Peterson, Magazines in the Twentieth Century,
Urbana, 01.: The University of Dlinois Press. 1956.
1 16. Ibid.
12.7. Cf. Gibbs, Wolcott. Time. Fortune. Life,HenryLuce,E.B. White
and Katherine White, editors, New York: Cowaro McCann,
1941
12.8. Ibid.
12.9. Cf. Jeanne Perkins Harman. Such Is Life, New York: Thomas Y.
CroweD Co., 1956.
I }O. During my 6rsttrip to New York in 1948, Hides received me with
his feet on the table and his face hidden behind a newspaper.
He took his time acknowledging my presence and sent me to the
61es to bring back. all of my published reportages. Humiliated.
I decided not to return, which did not stop Ufe from publishing
my other stories. See also, Infinity, August 1969.
131. a. John Kobler, Luu. His Time. Life and Fortune, New York:
Doubleday, 1968.
1 3 2.. Ibid.
133. a. Kobler, op. cit.
134 Life, no. 5 , vol. 58, February 1965.
135. Paul Wilkes, <Running Left to Right' in New York Magazine,
April 1970.
1}6. According to TelevisionlRadio Age, 16 November 1970, lime,
Inc., sold its radio and television stations in order to invest in
videocassettes.

Notes 2.2.5
137. A press release from Time, Inc., by Hedley Donovan and Andrew
Heiskell, 2.0 April 1 972..
138. Le Monde, December 3'4, 1972..
139. Paul Vanderbilt, Guide to the Specific Colleaions ofPrints and
Photographs in the Library of Congress. Minutes of Le Congres
International de photographie, Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 19<)0.
140. a. GiseIe Freund, The World in My Camera.
141. Ibid.
142. The New York Times Book Review, ; October 1969, p. 7.
143. Cf. john Morris, 'This we remember. Have photographers
brought home the reality?' Harper's Magazine, September 1972.
144. Ibid.
14;. Le Point: BislTots, vol. LVll, Paris: Souillac, Lot, 1960. Art and
literary review.
146. Told to the author by Robert Doisneau.
147. L'Express, ; July 1 962..
148. Time, 2; October 1971, p. 38.
149. Newsweek, 2 March 1970.
I ;0. Quoted by Richard Todd, Gathering Bunnyside, The Atlantic
Monthly, january 1972.
1 5 1 . Ibid.
152. Cf. PeterSchrag, The Decline ofthe Wasp, New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1971.
153 The Christian Century, 19 january 1972.
154. O. Schrag, op. cit.
I SS. Time, 2.7 September 1971.
I ;6. Man Ray, Autobiography, Paris: Laffont, 1964.
1;7. John Heartfield, Photomontagen, Ausstellungskatalog der
Deutschen Akademie der KUnste, Berlin, 1969.
1;8. a. Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film. A Bauhaus
book, London: Lund Humphries, 1969. Translation of the origi
nal appeared in 192.5 as volume 8 of the Bauhaus publications.
159. Walter Benjamin, 'Petite histoire de la photographie.'
160. Cf. Moholy-Nagy, op. cit.
16I. Richard Kostelanetz, ed., Moboly-Nagy, New York: Praeger,
1 970. This volume contains articles by Moholy-Nagy and articles
about him by different authors.
162.. George Eastman, 'A Brief Biography of the Founder of Easnnan
Kodak Company: in fmage,}ournalofPhotography and Motion
Pictures ofthe International Museum ofPhotography at George
Eastman House, 26 june 1972.
163. Cf. Time, J.6 June 1972.
164. Ibid.
165. Cf. Photographie nouvelle, March 1972..

226 Photography & Society

Acknowledgments

All the photographs and iUustrations in this book appear courtesy of

the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House.
Rochester, New York, except those provided by the following
collections., agendes, and individuals:

Lucien Aigner: p. 132.

Archives Photographiques, Caisse Nationale des Monuments
Historiques, Paris: pp. 41 (top), 45-
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich: p. 126.
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris: pp. 31 (bottom left), 9I.
Brassai: p. 192.
Collection Siror. Paris: p. lOS.
Diese Foto 1St Figentum, Munich: p. 92.
Robert Doisneau: p. 174.
Gisele Freund: pp. 8, 12, IS (top, middle leh & right), 17 (left), 23. 46,
49, 51. 52,60, 61.67, 73.94, 95, 167-
The Gemsbeim Collection, Humanities Research Center, University of
Texas at Austin: p. 2.2.
John Heartfield, p. 160.
Jean Lanes: frontispiece.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.: pp. Io6, 1I3'
Magnum: p. 169; MagnumlBischof: p. 2; Magnum/Cartier-Bresson:
p. 202; Magnum/Haas: p. 102; MagnumlRiboud: p. 214;
MagnumlSalomon: p. 114.
Museum ofthe City of New York: p. 112 (bottom).
National Armed Forces Museu Smithsonian Institution. Washing
ton, D.C.: p. 105.
Photo Keystone: pp. 134. 186.
Sipa-Prcss p. 189.
Societe Franse de Photographie, Paris: p. 89.
S.P.A.D.E.M., p. 194.
Peter Stackpole: p. 147 (bottom).
Time, Inc.: pp. 140, 147 (top), 149, 152.
H. Roger Viollet: pp. 30, 72.

Ellen Kuiper photoresearched all the materials provided by George

Eastman House.

u8 Photography & Society

Index
Adams, Ansel, 210
Adam-Salomon, Antoine Sam-
uel, 54. 77
Adamson, Roben, 49
Aigner, Lucien, 133. 135
Albin-Guillot, Laure, 135
Appert. E., r08
Arago, Franis, 23-27. 81
L'Art de Ia photographie (Dis
deri), 65-66
Alget, Eugene, 89-90. 91, 93
Bain, George Grantha 161
Bandy, Ina, 132
Barnack, Oskae, 127-28
Baudelaire, Cltarles, 40, 43.
78-79. 81
Bauhaus, 117. 196
Baumann, Hans. See Man,
Fdix H.
Bayard, Hippolyte, 28
Beals, Jessie Tarbox, 1 13
Bechmann, Freilierr von, 12.7
Berliner Illustrirte. 117. no,
12.3. Il.4, 142
Sertall (Vicomte d'Amoux),
54. 63
Berl4hmte Zeitgenossen in Un
bewachten AMgenblicken
(Salomon), Il.I-1.3
Bischof, Werner, 173
Bisson Brothers, 46-47. 49.
h-8:z.
Blucher, von, 127
Borich, Frais, 99
Bourke-White, Margaret, 147.
110
Brady, Mathew, 106. 107-8
Brassai, 193. 2.10
BraWl, Adolphe, 96-99
Brigman. Anne, 91
Calotypc, 50
Cameraless photography, 194-
'96
Camera obswra. 50
Cameras, 28-2.9. 86-87. II3,
119-20, 127-30, 201,
203-9
Camera Work. 91, 210
Cameron. Julia Margaret. 43
Capa, Cornell. 210
Capa. Robert, 132-33. 135-
36. 137, 161-62
Carbon paper, use of. 96
Carjat, Etienne, 40. 43. 54. 79
Carte-de-visite. 56-57. 84-85
Cartier-Bresson. Henri, 203
Cave, Madame. 80
Chad. Christian. 194
Chamhre Syndicale de Pho-
tographie, 8J -84
Chretien, Gilles-Louis. 9. 13-
'7
<lturchill. Winston, 1 50-5 I
Gvil War (American). 106.
107-8
Collodion process, 33. 96
Combe, George 49
Communards. See Paris Com-
mune
Coombes. Fred. 32
Copyright, '75-78
Coucbet, Gustave, 70-71, 72
Crimean War, 104. 106
Cropping of photographs, ' 7 '
Dadaism, ' 94
Daguerre, Louis jacques
Mande, 24-26, 28, 29, 31.
J2
Daguerreotype, 26-29. 31.
32-33
Daumier, Honore. 29. 3 5
Delacroix, Eugene, 80
Delano, jack, I I J
Delarod>e, Paul, 26, 59, 65-
66. 8 1
Ddeduze, Etienne jean, 73-74
Deutscher Pbotodienst. See
Dephot News Service
Dephot News Service, 125. 132
Diorama, 24
Disderi, Andre Adolphe Eu
gene, 49. 53. 55-59. 61.
65-68, 96
Doisneau, Robert. 175, 178-
79
Du Naturalisme dans ran
(Wey), 74-75
Duncan, David Douglas, 168,
,69
Eastman, George, 201, 210.
See also Kodak
Eisenstaedt. Alfred, 127, 132,
147, 149
Ermanox camera, II9-21, 127
Evans, Walker. II3, 210
Exposure time, 29-30, 106.
206
Farm Security Administration,
I I I. 1 1 3
Fenton, Roger, 104. 105-7
Film, 86. 104, 128-29. 2.04-6
FraPrussian War, 108
Freund, Gisele, 95, 129-30,
162.-68
Friedmann, Andrei. See Capa,
Robert
GaleUa, Ronald E., IS2.
George Eastman House, 2.11,
2.I2. See also International
Museum of Photography
Gidal Brothers, I 2.7
Giroux. Alphonse, 29, 32.
Godard Broth""" 44-45
Gonord (physionotracist), 16-
'7
Goro, Fritz, ] 3 2
Gouraud, Fra, 32.
Gropius, Walter, I I7. 196
Haas, Ernst, 103
Hadd Britton, 143
Halftone uproduction, ]04
Hannan, Felix, 1 3 5
Hearst newspapers, 133
Heartfield, John, ,6" '94-95
Hefner, Hugh, 183, IS7, 188
Heliogmvure, 98
Herzfdd. Hdmut. See Heart
field, John
Hicks, Wdson, '45
Hill, David Octavius, 49-50,
5'
Hine, Lewis W., 108, I I I
Hider, Adolf, [ 3 1 - ] 3 5, 161
Hoffman, Heinrich, 133 -3 5
How the Other Half Lives
(Riisl, '08
Hubschmann, Kurt, See Hut
ton, Kurt
Hutton, Kurt, 132
11lustTated Weekly. 1 3 1
Impressionism, 88-89, 9 1
Industrial Exposition of [855,
53 -54, 64. 66
Ingres, Jean Auguste Domi
nique, 3, 77-78
Instamaric camera, 203 -5
230 Photography & Society
International Center of Pho
tography, 210
International Museum of Pho
tography, 210
Johnston, Frances Benjamin,
,6,
Juste milieu painting, 59-60,
65, 8 1
Karsh, Yose, 212
Kertesz, Andre, I 27, I 35, I 37
, 86, 87, 88, 2.01, 203-
5, 2.07
Korean War, 172.
Korff, Kurt, 124. 131, 142
Krull, Germaine, 127, 135, [37
Kyrou, Ado, ]00
Lamartine, Alphonse Marie
Louis de, 77
Land, Edwin Robert, 2.05-6
Lange, Dorothea, I I 3
Lasteyrie, Philippe de, 4
Le Gray, Gustave, 43. 45-49
Leica camera, 12.7-2.9. 130,
'H
Leitz factory, 128. 130-31
, 30, 64, 104, 12.8, 2.07
Life, 129, 1 3 2.. 139. 141-55 ,
165-66, 2.15-16
lltbogmphy, 4, '-4
LoIaDt, Stefan, ]24-26. 1 3 1
Luee, Henry R., ] 3 9, 143,
146-49
McAvoy, Thomas, 12.9. 147
Magnum Agency, 133, 161-62.
Malraux, Andre, 95
Man, Fdix H., 125-2.6. 127.
12.9. 1 3 2., 141
Maurisset, T.-H., 2.7
Miniature, 10-11, 14, 17-18
Minolta 130, 2.08
Minox camera, 204
Moholy-Nagy. L:iszl6, 1 17,
126, 194, 195-98
Money, 1 5 6
Montauk Photo Conc:em. 1 6 1
Morris, John. 171-73
Munri, nttn, I2.7, 135
Munchner IlIustrierte Presse,
117, 124. 126
Musee imaginllire (Malraux),
95
Museum of Modem Art, 2.10
Mussolini, Benito, 126, 12.9
Nadar, Felix Toumachon, 35,
36-45. 49, H, 80
Nadar, Paul, 42
Napoleon Ill, 47, 57, 81-82
Naturalism, 73-75, 77
Negative, 33, 50, 56, 128, 206
Newhall, Beaumont. 212
New Vision (Moholy-Nagy).
'98
Nii:pce, Isidore, 2.4. 2.6
Nii:pce, Joseph Nicephore, 22,
2.3-2..4
Nixon, Richard M., 168, 169
Ogilvy, David, 216
Ona.ms, Jacqueline Keooedy,
182-83
O'Sullivan, Timothy, 107
Painting, Photography, Film
(Moholy-Nagyl, '95
Pantograph, 14
Paparazzi. 181-83
Paper. use of, 28, 96
Paris Commune. 66, 108
Paris-Match. 156- 57. 169-71
Paris World's Fair of 1855. 53.
See also Industrial Exposi
tion of 1855
Photo. 171
Photogram, 195-96
Photography, cameraless, 194.
[96
Photokina. 212.-I 3
Photomontage, 161, 194-95
Physionouace, 9, 1 3 - 1 8
Picture Post, 1 3 1
Plate, photographic, 2.2., 2.8,
2.9-30, 104-6, 120
Playboy, r83-88
Polaroid, 2.05-7
Polnareff. Michel, ISS-91
Postcard, 9S, 100
Prouvost, Jean, 156- 57
Puyo, Emile Joachim Constant,
89
Pyle. Ernie, 149
Quenedey, Edmund
(physionotracist), 14-17
Ray. Man, 90. 194. 2.10
Rayograph, 9.
Realism, 70-74
Realism, 71
Retouching, 42.. 64-65 . SS,
".
Revolution surrealiste, 90
Ribeau, Paul, 164-65
Riboud, Marc, 2.I 5
Riis, Jacob A., lOS
Robinson. Henry Peach, 43, 63
Russell, A. J., 106
Salomon, Erich, lIS, IIS-2..4,
132., 141
Scbwabik, Marian, I17
Self-portrait U.S.A. (Duncan),
.69
Senefdder. Alois, -4
Silhouette, I I-1 3
Smith, W. Eugene, 103
Societe hetiographique. S4
Soft-focus, 50, 88-89
Spolinski, Hdmut MUller von,
"7
Stadcpole, Peter, 147
Steichen, Edward, 91
Stieglitz, A1fred, 91, 161,2.10
Stryker, Roy, 1 1 1
Surrealism. 90, 193-94
SX-70 camera, 2.0S, 2.06
Szarfranski. 142.
Szarkowski, John, 2.1 I
Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe, 70,
75
Talbot, William Henry Fox, 18,
5
Trme. 143
Tunc, Inc., 143 - 56
Toomachon, Felix. See Nadar,
Felix Toumamoo
UlIstein Publishing Company,
lIS-I" 12..4
Umbo, 117
Vietnam War, 173, uS-16
Vogel, Lucien, '35-39
Vu, qo, 131, 135-39, 14 1
Weber, WoIfpng, 117
Wey, Francis, 74-75
World War U, '7'
Yvon, Adolphe, 8I-S2.
Index 2.3'