Baudelaire, a Skeptic, Shares His Photograph

Nele Mayer, a educatee at NYU, was recently awarded the H.W. Janson scholarship for excellence in the field of art history.This weblog post is derived from her work in Shelley Rice's form "Artful History of Photography."

Charles Baudelaire
Etienne Carjat, Portrait of Charles Baudelaire. Image ID: 5164138

In ca. 1863 French photographer Etienne Carjat took a Woodburytype photograph of poet and fine art critic Charles Baudelaire, who described photography in "The Salon of 1859" as "art's most mortal enemy." Baudelaire's head is in focus, while the edges of the portrait are softened. He is wearing a dark coat with a white shirt and a large silk bow tie that dominates the image. His facial expression is stern. He appears to be glaring out of this moving picture, defiant and critical of the world. Why does a man, who believed that photography contributed to the "impoverishment of the French genius" let himself be photographed and therefore share his epitome with the world?

Carjat's photograph of Baudelaire was role of a series called "Galerie Contemporaine" of 241 photographs depicting historic political, literary and artistic figures of the Second Empire in French republic. The portraits were fabricated by 28 photographers who had studios in Paris at the time. Etienne Carjat, who started his artistic career as a cartoonist and opened his beginning photographic studio in 1861, founded several weekly periodicals through which he met celebrities and friends whose portraits he took, including the one of Baudelaire.

Baudelaire was uneasy about considering photography as anything other than a "apprehensive servant to the sciences and art." His skepticism was not solely directed towards photography but also the industrial age in general. In the eyes of Baudelaire, 19thursday century France witnessed the end of the social and cultural arrangement that had given "existent art" room to prosper. However, even though he did non consider photography art, he even so had his photograph taken many times in his life—possibly considering he wanted to be remembered. With cartes-de-visite in the 1860s, photography straight influenced the public career of celebrities.

The need to make your image public and to share information technology with the world is straight connected with the idea of "sharing" in the Public Eye exhibition at The New York Public Library, where Carjat's portrait of Baudelaire finds its place in the Crowdsourcing section. In the context of this exhibition Carjat'southward portrait of Baudelaire could exist seen equally a social artifact whose main goal is communication. Yet, as an invaluable work past a famous photographer of a celebrated poet, its significance shifts from a social artifact to an artful object—a work of fine art.

Carjat captured an expressive confront that is non simply aesthetically beautiful only communicates something about the poet. The whole question and tension of whether photography is fine art or not is inherently embedded in Carjat's photo of Baudelaire. Even though this photograph definitely has artful value, one should also not forget with what intentions the photographer and the sitter entered this project. Their main goal seemed not to take been to create art, just rather to share this person and that moment in time with a wide audition.