French Postcards
A contemporary Stanhope rosary from Michioacan, Mexico.
Looking through the lens embedded in the cross presents a view of the Virgin of Guadalupe levitating strangely within a hazy space.
A seizure in 1863 involved a type of photograph that was particularly adaptable to pornography—microphotography. These tiny images, sold as transparencies, were impossible to read with the naked eye and were packaged with special magnifying viewers (called Stanhopes). Numerous patents for microphotographic techniques were filed in 1861 (by Martinache for “microphotographs of jewelry”; Regad, “Prints for microscopes”1862 (Brin fréres; Nachet et fils) during the peak of interest in this novelty. Caught this time with “micro nudes” were Guth and Laufer, who were middlemen rather than photographers. Other firms that tried to register microphotographs with the Ministry of the Interior had similar problems getting their images approved. The list of “planches sans ou avec texts non autorisées” in 1862 included macroviews by Dagron et Compagnie entitled Surprised Bathers, La Joyeuse orgie, L’ Indiscret, Léda; Voland’s micro Enlévement de Psyche and Venus et Adonis; and Villeneuve’s Le Balancoire and Le Hamac (all photos of artworks, which represented another type of illegal image). Some of these works were marked “á la condiction expresse de ne pas mettre á l’étalage” or “pour l’export,” which suggests that they were conditionally approved.
Captains of Industry
The industrialization of the pornographic photo market is suggested by the huge volume of images seized during raids in the late 1850s and 60s. Philippe Dubourjal, a thirty-year-old wine merchant and photographer at the time of his first arrest in 1859, had 1,748 obscene prints in his possession when he was arrested for a second time in 1980. In his home in Belleville, 36 daguerreotypes, 69 paper prints, and 97 negatives were found. Joseph Auguste Belloc, who had run photography studios since 1849, had been noticed as early as 1856 for dealing in pornography. When his hand-colorist was raided in October 1861, police found two strongboxes, a desk, and a darkroom containing 1,200 obscene photographs, boxes of stereoscopic views disguised as books bearing the title Oeuvres complétes de Buffon (samples are now in the collection of the Bibliotéque nationale), 3,000 prints on paper, 307 negatives, three trays with photographs being processed, four albums of nude women, 102 large-format prints of women in “licentious positions,” and two cartes de viste sold by the popular boulevard photographer Ken.
By hiring middlemen to copy negatives to print, hand-color, and mount the images, enterprising pornographers could reap maximum profits from a limited number of sittings with the nude model while hiding their production from the police. The difficulties of reading photographic style, the division of labor, and the use of the same models by a variety of photographers made it next to impossible to identify the criminal responsible for the production of pornographic photographs unless he or she was seized flagrante delicto.
The very anonymity of photographic production, unlike the telling artist’s touch in traditional visual imagery, contributed to the success of pornographic photography.
Elizabeth Anne McCauley, Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris 1848-1871 p. 160.
From Documents to Monuments
I had a long talk with my advisor yesterday, and I am sort of shocked with how well everything has been going. Although things have fallen to new levels of deadness on the blog, there has been a flurry of research and negotiations in the real world. The travels have been both “virtual” and “actual.”
I’ve become interested in doing research into the photographer Henry Hamilton Bennett—not because he is particularly outstanding or unique, but because there is a wealth of information available about the ordinary functioning of his studio between 1865-1908. Bennett was an enterprising businessman that managed to scratch out living by transforming the area that he worked into a “tourist” attraction. After his death, his studio continued after him in the hands of his second wife and his daughters— as a “brand” built upon Bennett’s self-made myth.
As near as I can figure out, there are two other researchers working with the Bennett archive materials. Both are Cultural Geography / American Studies people. Between them, they have produced at least four excellent articles and one dissertation chapter. Discussing this with my advisor, he says this is both a good and a bad thing—it confirms that the material is rich, but it also means that I couldn’t “own” Bennett. That’s fine with me, because it isn’t Bennett as a person that interests me—it is Bennett’s role as a center for imaging practices in the Wisconsin Dells. Both of the other researchers are “light” in the theory department and “heavy” in terms of historical narration. My interest is largely theoretical—Bennett’s photographic documents were instrumental in transforming the Wisconsin Dells into an odd sort of monument. I am not interested in emplotting Bennett into a cultural or technologically determined narrative; I am interested in how this transformation, intentional or unintentional, was managed and produced.
It dawned on me this week that my current research question—how are documents transformed into monuments?—is precisely the same question (appropriated from Foucault) that I spelled out in my application letter to the University of Minnesota. Travel and tourism have gradually encroached on my thinking, both because I have been traveling, and because photography has a provocative role in the promotion of traveling. The problem with restricting things primarily to “the impact of photography,” “the impact of halftone printing,” or “the impact of the railroad” is the implication that these factors have a self-important causal relation (photographic promotion created tourism) rather than an instrumental function (photographic promotion facilitated tourism).
But even as I write this I realize just how slippery the difference is between instrumentality and causality. Perhaps more reflection on Aristotle’s four causes is in order. While there has been no shortage of reading, there has been a scarcity of writing and talking in the last year or so. If I can get my level of articulation back up to par, it will be easier to work through this.
Mrs. Fletcher
Not Mrs. F.
MRS. FLETCHER,RESPECTFULLY announces that she is prepared to execute Daguerreotype Miniatures in a style unsurpassed by any American or European artist. Those who have never enjoyed an opportunity of examining the Photogenic process, or a specimen of the art, cannot form an adequate idea of the extreme perfection, beauty, and wonderful minuteness of the
PROFESSOR AND TEACHER OF THE
PHOTOGENIC ART.
DAGUERROTYPE PICTURES.These are truly “the pencillings of nature,” the production of minutes or seconds, as perfect as the imagination can conceive. As the object looks at the moment it is taken, so is the representation.
The Plate, a blank void, becomes filled up with all the fairy lines and graceful symmetry of a picture, more perfect than the most exquisite designed engraving affording another beautiful example that the art of man cannot be compared to the works of nature and of nature’s God.
Ladies and Gentlemen are invited to call and examine specimens of the art, next door to the Union Bank, Place d’ Armes, where Mrs. F. is constantly in attendance.
Sept. 16, 1841.
Advertisement from the Montreal Transcript as quoted in Canadian Women’s Studies, vol. 2, no. 3 (1980) p. 7
Preface
Preface
The following pages are presented to the public in the hope that, imperfect as in many respects they are, they may still be the means of effecting some good, by assisting in directing the attention of Emigrants and others, to a portion of the United States, which all, who have examined it, unite in representing—to use the words of a distinguished English traveler—as “one of the finest domains that nature ever offered to man.”
So superior are its attractions, that those who have never seen them, will probably be inclined to doubt the correctness of their faithful delineation.
Under this impression, the writer, to corroborate the views which a continuous residence upon the spot, since 1836, has enabled him to form—has taken the liberty of availing himself, freely, of the interesting testimony of many other eye witnesses; the combined weight of which, it is hoped, will prove sufficient to satisfy even the most skeptical, that Iowa and Wisconsin are, at least, worth visiting.
The second part of these “Sketches,” (embracing Wisconsin) being in a state of forwardness, is intended to appear with as little delay as possible.
Sinipee, Wisconsin, May, 1839
Sketches of Iowa and Wisconsin by John Plumbe Jr. is fascinating to me. Plumbe’s expressed intention “to direct the attention” to a certain domain of the United States is based on superiority of “attractions” rather than potential for exploitation. The ensuing pages act not to inspire reasoned contemplation of freely available resources (no land of milk and honey here), but rather an abstract sort of wonder at the views available to a Midwestern resident.
The first step in promoting settlement is suggesting that the place is “at least, worth visiting.”
Facade
The H.H. Bennett studio fascinates me for a number of reasons. It seems like it has been, since the first decades of its existence, a manufactured relic. The phony façade seen in this postcard from the sixties has been torn down and the original brick restored (as of 2000 I think). The strange little kiosk seen in the “old” picture (I’m not sure of its vintage) is still there, a sort of little “show and tell” space sitting on the street. I have the feeling I’ll be spending a great deal of the summer in Madison, Wisconsin, trying to research material related to this studio. Oddly congruent with the banner on the old photograph, when I last visited, there were Native American doll relics on display.
Bimbling
My schedule this year has really caused me to back-off from blogging. Unlike my last round of being an absentee landlord this summer, this time I actually do miss it. Sometimes I wonder if I will lose my ability to write in an entertaining manner if I continue with this “serious scholarship” stuff. I hope not—especially since I freakishly find “serious scholarship” immensely entertaining when it is done right.
I think what I miss most is bimbling. The odd thing is that as I become more focused in my research, the evidence of that research on my blog does appear to be random and aimless. That’s why I miss blogging so much this time, I guess. It’s the one part of my writing environment that doesn’t necessarily have to make sense—one can bimble instead.
There was a young Lady named Sairey
Wished a photograph (good) of the dairy,
She was told that, for views,
The best box to use
Was Anthony’s new one called “Fairy.”
She then told her friend how she guessed
That in a new lens she’d invest,
So she bought a Dallmeyer
And though it cost higher
Than poor ones she found it the best.
For dry plates she then made a dash,
But she found that so many were trash,
She believed they all lied,
Until Eastman’s she tried,
When she found them to be just the (hash)!
MORAL.
If experience from this you would gain,
The road to success was quite plain.
Come out of the woods,
Get first quality goods,
Avoiding both trouble and pain.
Anonymous limerick from Anthony’s Photographic Bulletin, vol. 16. no. 1 (January 10, 1885)
