Photographic Simulation and Nineteenth-Century Expression Lindsay Smith University of Sussex, [email protected]
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Criticism Volume 54 | Issue 1 Article 8 2012 Photographic Simulation and Nineteenth-Century Expression Lindsay Smith University of Sussex, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism Recommended Citation Smith, Lindsay (2012) "Photographic Simulation and Nineteenth-Century Expression," Criticism: Vol. 54: Iss. 1, Article 8. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol54/iss1/8 PhotogrAPhiC in october 1843, predating Wil- liam henry Fox talbot’s cel- siMuLAtioN ANd ebrated The Pencil of nature, NiNeteeNth- which began to appear in install- CeNtury ments in June of the following exPressioN year, Anna Atkins (1799–1871) Lindsay smith published Part i of Photographs of British Algae: cyanotype impres- sions. it was the first photographi- darwin’s camera: Art and cally illustrated book in Britain. Photography in the Theory of the only daughter of the scientist evolution, by Phillip Prodger. John george Children, Atkins oxford: oxford university Press, used the cyanotype process, de- 2009. Pp. 320. 7 color illustrations, veloped by John herschel, to doc- 106 b & w illustrations. $39.95 ument specimens of algae she had cloth. collected. she was motivated to do so by a desire to record botani- cal minutiae that might be missed by other media. Atkins’s methods of generating cyanotypes, which involved washing, drying, and ar- ranging hundreds of delicate spec- imens of seaweed and preparing sheets of cyanotype paper, were in their own ways as painstaking as herschel’s chemical researches. the delicate photograms lent an incomparable transparency to the tender plant life reproduced. Fa- cilitating a sort of seeing through the object, somewhat like the reve- latory eye of a microscope, the cya- notype medium bestowed upon the observer’s visual capacity a type of extra dimension. scientific rationalization and faithful repro- duction were at the heart of At- kins’s project. When twenty-nine years later, in 1872, Charles dar- win published his photographi- cally illustrated on the expression criticism Winter 2012, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 167–174. issN 0011-1589. 167 © 2012 by Wayne state university Press, detroit, Michigan 48201-1309 168 liNdsAy sMith of the emotion in Man and Ani- announcement of photography in mals, photography was an estab- england, marks the beginning of lished medium, having undergone what would become a developing huge developments. the albumen correspondence between darwin’s prints of facial expression in dar- scientific career and the photo- win’s text seem a far cry from her- graphic medium. While The ex- schel’s haunting blue process that pression was darwin’s first and would achieve long-term cultural only photographically illustrated relevance in the form of the archi- book, Prodger demonstrates that tectural blueprint. indeed, while its content evolved over a consider- the latter records unique originals able period of time. darwin drew that stress the fragile substance of heavily on his notebooks labeled its objects, the former presents an “M” and “N” that record his ideas infinitely reproducible medium about emotional expression. the that generates by the 1870s a more first of which he began in 1838 and familiar monochromatic schema the second in 1856, three years be- of browns. yet in the historical fore the publication of The origin and material distance between of Species. darwin also collected these two moments, and two very visual images, both as a means of distinct photographic processes, a cataloging examples of facial ex- number of conceptual and philo- pressions (as data) and also with sophical debates had come to de- a view to using them as illustra- termine the ontological status of tions in his work. The expression the photographic medium. At the culminated in thirty photographs same time, the ability of a photo- and a number of wood engrav- graph to uniquely make present ings. some of the photographs an object, to render it with an un- were produced specifically for precedented degree of veracity, re- the project, while others darwin mained a source of fascination for sourced from a range of places, in- darwin as he embraced it in 1872, cluding the London stereoscopic as it had been for Atkins in 1843. Company, english regional firms, Phillip Prodger’s fascinating, and French, italian, and American intricately researched, and beau- firms. Many of these images, in- tifully produced book darwin’s cluding forty-one that Prodger be- camera inhabits vital aspects of lieves were “bought specifically for these four decades of photography. their expressive content” (9), are indeed, the somewhat happy coin- collected in the Cambridge uni- cidence of darwin’s publication of versity Library and, along with Voyage of the Beagle in 1839 with thousands of letters, manuscripts, the patenting of the daguerreo- edited proofs, and newspaper clip- type in Paris, along with talbot’s pings, provide the rich archive for oN Prodger’s dArwin’S cAMerA 169 darwin’s camera. the darwin in an appendix, Prodger includes Correspondence Project that has rejlander’s hitherto unpublished so far only dealt with written ma- “odd odds and ends,” a tran- terial has also enabled Prodger to scription of notes cataloging vari- situate the fascinating project of eties of expression that he sent to The expression within the context darwin in 1871 and that darwin of the range of darwin’s work. marked up in red pencil, a text divided into eleven chapters, that conveys both the intensity of each holding some compelling the two men’s conversations about central preoccupation such as photography and also the playful eyes and ears, crying infants, eu- engagement of their working re- genics and the spirit world, Prod- lationship. in unpacking the nu- ger’s book at once orbits around ances of rejlander’s relationship The expression—tracing its origins to darwin, this brief aphoristic and those texts that came after text reveals some of those larger it—while periodically introduc- contradictions at the heart of the ing readers to the minutiae of its photographic process in the nine- production, those ways in which teenth century. decisions on illustration were care- the first chapter of darwin’s fully orchestrated and subject to camera provides new information so many contingent factors that on darwin’s knowledge of paint- have largely remained invisible ing and illustration that reminds to us. For example, darwin’s sig- us of the extent to which his expe- nificant relationship with the rience of visual culture began very artist and photographer oscar re- much as a prephotographic one. jlander, fascinating for its displays the chapter also identifies his of shared interests and affection, reliance on literary references. in is anchored in a discussion of the analyzing sebastiano del Piom- role of theatricality in a photo- bo’s The raising of lazarus (1517– graphically illustrated scientific 19), Prodger connects to edmund book. Prodger addresses head-on Burke’s influential Philosophical the apparent paradox of darwin’s enquiry into the origin of our decision to use photographed the- ideas of the Sublime and the Beauti- atrical gestures in a book dedicated ful (1757) darwin’s interest in the to the analysis and understanding painting’s “sublimity.” Although of spontaneous emotion. indeed, Prodger does not go on to analyze Prodger demonstrates the flex- in detail darwin’s assimilation of a ibility of the terms “evidence” and particularly Burkeian, as opposed “illustration” in a period in which to a Kantian, account of the sub- there did not yet exist a strict pro- lime with its roots in “terror,” the tocol for “scientific” photography. connection that Prodger makes is 170 liNdsAy sMith enabling. it allows readers to fur- ones in which Bell identifies prec- ther consider those ways in which edents in the fine arts of painting Burke’s relentless interest in physi- and sculpture of depicting fine ological effects of the sublime and gradations of emotion. the beautiful on the human sub- At the same time, of course, ject drove darwin’s own concep- postphotography, darwin’s rela- tual approaches in The expression. tionship to the visual arts invari- darwin’s interest in blushing, for ably must differ from that of Bell, example, is one that had preoc- and darwin’s camera demon- cupied Burke in the Philosophical strates in its later chapters some of enquiry, especially the question of the myriad ways in which photog- whether blushing required an au- raphy makes its particular pres- dience or whether it was possible ence felt. While not all readers will to blush in private. thus, setting agree with Prodger’s claim in his darwin’s The expression within introduction that darwin “forever the larger context of nineteenth- changed the way that pictures are century philosophical, literary, seen and made” (xxiv), it is un- and artistic inquiry allows Prod- doubtedly the case that darwin’s ger throughout darwin’s camera use of photographs in The expres- to historicize those complex con- sion raises key theoretical questions cerns that came together in dar- pertaining to the medium more win’s text. For example, chapter generally. some of these concern 4, dealing with the passions, dis- the translation of the modernity cusses the interdisciplinary sphere of photographs into the older me- in which darwin sought to situate dium of wood engravings. Chapter his understanding of the expres- 6, on nineteenth-century photo- sion of the emotions. there were graphs of “the insane,” addresses diverse publications for darwin to material perhaps most familiar to consider: physiognomic treatises, readers in the form of guillaume- passion manuals, and anatomi- Benjamin duchenne de Bologne’s cal studies. in this context, Prod- albumen prints from The Mecha- ger shows how Charles Bell’s The nism of human Facial expression, Anatomy and Philosophy of expres- or an electro-physiological Analysis sion as connected with the Fine Arts of the expression of the Passions Ap- (1806) provided for darwin not plicable to the Practice of the Fine only evolutionary implications in Arts (1862).