New
Histories of Writing II
Technologies
2003 MMLA Meeting
Chicago, IL
08 November
Lisa
Kuitert
University of Amsterdam
The
writer's portrait: An exploration of the influence of photography
on authors and authorship in the nineteenth century
Now
that photography has reached such perfection in the year 2003 that
we think nothing of sending photographs by telephone at a moment's
notice, it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand how
spectacular and incredible the invention of the daguerreotype around
1839 would have seemed to people of the 19th century. They were
of course familiar with painted miniature portraits or engravings,
but photography after all was quite different. And even though we
cannot imagine just how different, most of us know the sensation
of reading the work of a 19th-century author, discovering something
of his or her life, becoming interested, and then suddenly coming
across a photograph of the author: so that's what he looked like!
Whether the sensation is positive or negative, the photograph arouses
emotion.
Without a photograph, evidently, the picture is not complete. In
this paper I would like to examine writers and photography in greater
depth. How did the rise of photography affect literature? I will
not discuss photography in general terms, as many have already done,
but will broach relatively unknown territory, namely the impact
of photographic portraits of writers on the production, distribution
and consumption of literature in the 19th century.1 For the history
of writing is also the history of the context in which that writing
took place, and the new inventions that writers encountered played
a role. In a sense this paper can also be regarded as indebted to
'visual culture' studies. For many people, the visual aspect of
culture is a powerful component of cultural communication, because
the seen may be the surface of an underlying and unseen system of
meaning. Visual culture examines the act of seeing as a product
of the tensions between the external images or objects, and internal
thought processes.2 The 19th century is particularly interesting
in this respect, as the visual began to be more and more exploited
during this period. For the 19th-century reader, words and images
for example were combined increasingly often, in the form of illustrated
novels and magazines. The following discussion concerns work-in-progress,
so that more questions will be raised than answered.
Writers'
portraits as such, it must be said, were nothing new in the 19th
century. For engraved writers' portraits had been in existence for
a long time, even constituting a separate genre in the 17th century,
in the form of the 'portrait poem', which Rembrandt also frequently
employed. The portrait poem (as the name implies) consisted of a
portrait accompanied by a poem on the individual portrayed, often
a writer. The Netherlands at all events had one collector of painted
and engraved writers' portraits, namely Arnoud van Haalen, who had
built up an enormous collection by the beginning of the 18th century,
including both his own work and that of others.3 In 1719 his collection
amounted to more than 200 portraits. These were also accompanied
by verses, in the 283-page volume Panpoeticum Batavum by Lambert
Bidloo (1720).
The writer's portrait as such was thus universally known, but the
engraved portrait did not give way imperceptibly to the photographic
portrait. Various accounts testify that to the 19th-century mind,
photography was little short of a mystery. In 1856, for example,
a French country inn-keeper named Gazebon asked the famous photographer
Felix Nadar to take his photograph at a distance - for Nadar lived
in Paris - as he had heard that you could have your picture taken
without being physically present. And Honoré de Balzac seriously
believed that every time you were photographed, your body lost a
thin outer layer of skin.4 In her famous essay Susan Sontag wrote
that the invention of photography enabled people to know what their
parents looked like in former days, and what they themselves looked
like as children.5 With painted and engraved portraits you could
not be so sure. It was well known that these often bore not the
slightest resemblance. Painted miniatures had a primarily symbolic
value, comparable to the locket of hair. In England at the beginning
of the 19th century it was the fashion to commission a portrait
of your beloved's eye, and to wear it in miniature, as if you could
recognise this painted eye from among thousands. Silhouettes did
give a good resemblance, according to contemporary accounts, but
they naturally portrayed only part of the face. The daguerreotype
resembled the silhouette and the miniature in that only one prototype
existed. It was therefore a very personal thing. Daguerreotypes
were printed on metal, not paper, and the surface was so easily
damaged that the image had to be kept airtight behind glass, and
was therefore made up into a locket or brooch, or else kept in a
case, glass and all.6
As a result, such daguerreo-portraits were treated as painted miniatures
had been for centuries: cherished as precious trinkets, they were
primarily a token of affection for the person portrayed. But because
the daguerreotype was so eerily realistic, it had more than a symbolic
value. Photography presented both reality and a more profound truth.
For, other than one is inclined to think today, people in the 19th
century were convinced that photography actually gave more insight
into someone's inner self than paintings or engravings. This is
shown by remarks by contemporaries, such as that of the poet Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. According to her, a photographic portrait captured
'the very shadow of the person', as she wrote in a letter of 1843.
And Walt Whitman, who was greatly interested in photography, wrote:
'the strange fascination of looking at the eyes of a portrait sometimes
goes beyond what comes from the real orbs themselves.'7 It is not
surprising that the daguerreotypist enjoyed great prestige in the
early years. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables
(1851) the photographer makes his appearance as a character. In
this novel the Balzaccian fear is expressed that a photograph is
not just an image, but a part of the individual portrayed which
has acquired a life of its own. The rural maiden Phoebe looks at
a portrait and is struck by the glittering of the glass plate, so
that she seems to be looking into a mirror, at a face which stares
eerily back at her. Precisely because shutter speed was so slow,
facial expressions acquired something ghostly, although the image
was otherwise so realistic. Early photographers therefore had to
do their best to produce not merely a likeness, but a genuine portrait.
'The Daguerreotype will never do for portrait painting', declared
Lewis Gaylord Clark gloomily in 1839: 'Its pictures are too natural'.8
In all its incomprehensibility the new invention made demands not
so much on the intelligence as on the imagination. Although it was
technical in nature, therefore, it was also an art form, although
some contested the latter point. Baudelaire proved to be one of
the greatest faultfinders with regard to photography, precisely
because of the high degree of reality produced by a photograph.
As a refined aesthete, he feared that those who felt that art should
imitate nature would accept photography with open arms as the highest
form of art, since it approached reality most closely.9
On the grounds of all these examples we may conclude that early
photographs served as a sort of fetish. A photograph of someone,
a writer for example, was thus quite different from an engraved
portrait or a silhouette. As long as only one prototype of a daguerreotype
could be made, it was impossible to distribute photographs of yourself
to many people at once, as celebrities do today. What was possible,
and was often done, was to make a lithographic copy of a daguerreotype.
This led to accurate and reproducible portraits which were sometimes
difficult to distinguish from an actual photograph. This was seen
as a new technique, and it was therefore explicitly stated when
a lithograph had been taken 'from a daguerreotype'. You often see
such lithographs as frontispiece to an almanac or other work of
belles-lettres. As early as 1850 the American photographer and photographic
gallery owner Matthew Brady produced a book, in instalments, of
lithographs based on photographs, which he called The Gallery of
Illustrious Americans.
Nevertheless, many people took the trouble to go and look at real
daguerreotypes, just as these days we are (generally) not content
with a mere postcard of the Mona Lisa. The most popular daguerreotypes
were those of famous people. For the first time, visitors to the
Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855 could inspect a large collection
of photographic portraits of famous people, including writers: it
was a huge success. All over the United States daguerreotype galleries
sprung up like mushrooms. These consisted of exhibition space, often
with a studio at the back. Those of Matthew Brady and Plumbe were
famous. In his memoirs Nadar writes about several Parisian galleries,
and remarks that the clientèle was an added attraction to
passers-by, 'for they found it just as interesting to peer through
the glass of the display windows at the succession of famous visitors,
who seated themselves on the yellow velvet cushions of the great
round divan, passing the photographs of the day to each other.'10
It was a real meeting place for the intellectual élite of
Paris, whose visitors according to Nadar included Théophile
Gautier and, oddly enough, that critic of photography, Baudelaire.
Nadar had managed to persuade even him to pose for the camera. Thanks
to such daguerreotype galleries it was possible after all to become
familiar with the faces of famous writers.11
It would soon become technically possible for every reader to buy
one of these photographs of writers for himself, namely around 1855,
when the production of several prints from a single permanent and
pinpoint-sharp glass negative was made possible by means of the
wet-plate process. In the meantime, however, making a photographic
portrait was very expensive, costing ten guilders in the Netherlands
around the middle of the 19th century, the equivalent of one and
a half weeks' wages for a working man. When, in 1854, the French
photographer A.A. Disderi hit on the idea of printing various small
images the size of a visiting card (9 x 6 cm) from a single plate,
a new era was born. These cartes de visites, as they were called,
proved a great success. It had now become possible for the beau
monde, and even for the man in the street, to hand out photo-portraits
as souvenirs on all sides. A single photograph of visiting-card
format cost less than 25 cents in the Netherlands. Photographs became
mass produced. This led, among other things, to a flourishing trade
in collectable cartes de visites of famous people, including writers..
Special albums were designed for them, embellished with velvet and
inlaid with ivory. The Leids Prentenkabinet (Leiden Print Gallery)
numbers several of these albums in its collection, containing various
photographs of writers. The French and British royal families permitted
their portraits to come onto the market, while in the Netherlands,
portraits of the youthful Princess Wilhelmina became a collector's
item. Britain's Queen Victoria had a hundred or so albums of her
own, in which the crowned heads of Europe and other celebrities
were stored. Famous people were sometimes paid for posing, as this
was still very time-consuming at that period.12 On the other hand,
it could also serve to their own advantage. It has been surmised
that President Lincoln's election as president was boosted by the
portrait cards in circulation during the campaign of 1860, and which
transformed him from an unknown to a familiar figure - there is
evidently nothing new under the sun, in that respect.13
Some authors sold their own portraits; this was the case at least
with the Netherlands' most famous 19th-century writer, Multatuli.
He had a window made at his publishers' office, where the portraits
were sold. He insisted on a good likeness; rejecting photographs
which were too unlike. The primary aim of Multatuli, generally seen
as an unconventional, even vain man, was to use the money so earned
to found a new daily newspaper. His publisher G.L. Funke put a separate
portrait of Multatuli on the market.14
Publishers zeroed in on the public's demand to see the faces of
famous people, by bringing out photo books such as Men of mark:
a gallery of contemporary portraits of men distinguished in the
senate, the church, in science, literature and art, the army, navy,
law, medicine etc. (London 1876), Galerie contemporaine, littéraire,
artistique (Paris 1876-1894) and in the Netherlands Onze hedendaagse
letterkundigen (Our contemporary men-of-letters) compiled by Jan
ten Brink (1885). The portraits in these collectors' albums, which
came out in serial form, are sharp and unadorned by photographer's
props and suchlike. The important thing was to express the character
of the person portrayed. Among the politicians and scientists portrayed
in these 'galleries', we also find writers, such as Victor Hugo
and Jules Verne; the Dutch publication even devoted itself exclusively
to writers.
Around 1860-1870, books with pasted-in photographs came into fashion,
but the laborious technique ruled out mass production.15 The purchaser
could in some case order his publication with or without a photographic
portrait of the author, according to Dutch national biographical
accounts. In 1870, a volume of poetry by the famous Dutch popular
poet Jan Pieter Heije cost 2 guilders with a pasted-in portrait,
1.25 guilders without: you could also buy the portrait separately
for 75 cents.16 The publisher usually pasted such portraits inside
the book, but there are also publications where they form part of
the cover, as an engraving or medallion.17 There were bibliophiles
who commissioned an exclusive portrait or medallion of the author
for the binding of their favourite books. The brothers De Goncourt
favoured this practice, as their book collection testifies.18 The
extent to which the writer's portrait had become established is
shown by a matchbox dating from 1880, on which the manufacturer
has stuck a portrait of the Dutch short story writer, J.J. Cremer.19
I do not know whether matchboxes bore the portraits of other writers
at such an early date.
On the grounds of such phenomena you can conclude that the 19th-century
public was evidently eager to know what writers looked like in real
life: what sort of clothes they wore and what kind of state these
were in (often remarkably bad, going by the many missing buttons
in Nadar's photographs, for example), whether they had wrinkles
and how their moustaches and beards were trimmed. This is also shown
by the fact that images of writers crop up in another 19th-century
innovation: the waxworks museum. I managed to get hold of the 1882
catalogue for an Amsterdam waxworks, which showed that, besides
the usual statesmen and scientists, the Amsterdam public could feast
its eyes on Alexandre Dumas and Goethe, among others. No Dutch writers
were included, but the waxworks director frankly admitted in the
catalogue that he had completely followed the lead of English and
German examples, namely Madame Tussaud of London, and Castan of
Berlin.20
Some writers, such as Balzac and Gerard de Nerval, were reluctant
to have their photographs taken, while others were very keen. In
the Netherlands it was regarded as a honour to have your photograph
adorn the annual Muzenalmanak (Almanac of the Muses).21 Writers
who took an interest in the new technique included Edgar Allan Poe,
Walt Whitman, Von Humboldt, Lamartine and (somewhat later) Emile
Zola, Lewis Carroll and August Strindberg. A hundred or so portraits
of Walt Whitman were made, the most famous (but unfortunately lost)
being the one used for the lithograph in the first edition of Leaves
of Grass (1855). This first publication of Whitman's has no author's
name on the cover, only the portrait of the relaxed-looking, attractive
author. Whitman himself wrote that his book was 'a reproduction
of the author'. 'His name is not on the frontispiece, but his portrait,
half-length, is. The contents of the book form a daguerreotype of
his inner being […]'.22 With this portrait, which shows not
just the head and shoulders of the author, but extends far below
the waist, Whitman was playing with the expectations of the reader,
who would have been accustomed to the poet's classical pose, seated
at his desk, or showing only head and shoulders, and naturally sporting
a high collar and traditional side-whiskers. For every profession
had adopted a standard pose of its own.23 As the century progressed
you saw avant-garde writers freeing themselves of this. This was
the case in the Netherlands, with the Tachtigers, or Eighties Movement,
a group of writers who adopted an anti-bourgeois attitude, both
in their work and in the context of their lives. They had themselves
photographed in quite a different way from their predecessors, by
renowned photographer friends such as G. Breitner and W. Witsen.
Their photographs resemble impressions, captured moments in time,
shockingly honest.24 Writers thus began to exert themselves more
to achieve a suitable image.
At
this point, two conclusions can be drawn. The first is that a writer's
photograph in the 19th century was seen as something essentially
different from an engraved portrait. The second is that there was
great demand for photographs of writers. The question then arises:
does the rise of the writer's portrait have more than anecdotal
significance? Did the writer's portrait bring about a new way of
looking at authors? Or is the writer's portrait itself a result
of a new way of looking at or approach to authors? In conclusion
I will therefore discuss the emergence of the writer's photograph
from the perspective of the three most important parties in the
book production communication model - writers, publishers, readers
- in order to arrive at a number of concrete points for research.
Publishers: we have seen that publishers were quick to compile photo-books
around writers and to paste photographs of writers in books. And
we know what the writer's photo-portrait led to in the long term.
When you buy a novel these days, you nearly always see a photograph
of the author on the back cover. Publishers believe that if the
author is seen, the book will sell better, leading them to push
writers not only in front of the camera, but also onto television.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Dutch publisher Vassallucci recently
went so far as to have its authors parade on a catwalk in front
of an international audience. Critics swear that an attractive woman
writer these days has more chance of achieving best-seller status
than a plain one. Were 19th-century publishers also awake to the
power of the writer's photograph to boost sales? Were photographic
portraits, or lithos based on them, used in their advertising campaigns?
Students of the UVA are presently working on research into the archives
of the Royal Dutch Book Trade Association (Nederlandse Koninklijke
Vereniging van het Boekenvak), and an initial exploration has shown
that the number of authors' portraits is rather disappointing. Publishers
could be called commercial in various respects, but not so much
with regard to the exploitation of a writer's looks. Perhaps because
of the cost factor.
Readers: In the reception of a literary work, to what extent did
readers allow themselves to be influenced by the realistic, and
the 'human - all too human' image of the writer, as portrayed in
the photograph? To find out one would have to search for comments
in reviews or diaries. Various writers in the 19th century mention
the fact that photography had invaded their privacy. Alfred Lord
Tennyson, for example, complained to Julia Margaret Cameron: 'I
can't be anonymous because of your confounded photographs.'25 And
the Dutch writer Multatuli wrote that, to his amazement, he had
been recognised in the street by complete strangers. Did the rise
of the writer's photographic portrait make the relationship between
writer and reader more intimate, more familiar? Or, on the contrary,
did fan behaviour related to portrait collecting increase the distance,
because it made the writers even more famous?
Writers: In conclusion it would of course be interesting to ascertain
whether the rise of the writer's photographic portrait has also
left traces in writing itself. In this context I am inclined to
think of writing with a more ego-minded tint, à la Walt Whitman.
Did the rise of the writer's photographic portrait lead to a more
honest, personal sort of confessional novel? Or perhaps to more
vanity prose? It is difficult to separate such effects from general
trends, such as the rise of commerce in literary culture or in the
generally increased display of the self. One question which arises
is: to what extent can we speak of an international trend in this
respect? This seems to me a fruitful subject of discussion.
Notes
1 For various studies on the relationship between literature and
photography in general, see: Erwin Koppen, Literatur und Photographie.
Uber Geschichte und Thematik einer Medienentdeckung Stuttgart 1987;
Bernd Stiegler, Philologie des Auges. Die photographische Entdeckung
der Welt im 19 Jahrhundert Munich 2001; Miles Orvell, The real thing
Chapel Hill 1989; Jane M. Rabb, Literature & photography. Interactions
1840-1990.
2 E.Hooper-Greenhill,
Museums and the interpretation of visual culture London 2000, p.
14
3 Thanks
to Bram Schuytvlot who drew my attention to this collector. See
also M.A. Schenkeveld-Van der Dussen, Retorica van Onderzoek Utrecht
1990, pp. 15-16.
4 Felix Nadar, Toen ik fotograaf was Amsterdam 2000.
5 Susan Sontag, On photography 1973
6 Mattie Boom, 150 jaar fotografie The Hague 1989, p. 11.
7 Walt Whitman, 'Visit to Plumbe's Gallery July 2 1846' in: Jane
M. Rabb, Literature & photography. Interactions 1840-1990, pp.
19-22.
8 Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs. Images as History.
Matthew Brady to Walker Evans New York 1989.
9 Susan Blood 'Baudelaire against photography: an allegory of old
age' M.L.N. 101 (1986) nr. 4, pp. 817-837.
10 Quoted from Felix Nadar, Toen ik fotograaf was Amsterdam 2000,
pp. 135-136.
11 Research must yet show whether or not such exclusive photographic
galleries existed in the Netherlands. There was no such gallery
in Amsterdam, at all events, as is shown by a sample survey based
on the almanac Amsterdam. Gids met platen Amsterdam 1882. Art dealers
who sold photographs did exist however.
12 Naomi Rosenblum A World History of Photography NY 1984, p. 72
13 Naomi Rosenblum A World History of Photography NY 1984, p. 63
14 See K. ter Laan, Multatuli encyclopedie (under sale of portraits).
15 J. de Zoete in D. van Lente (ed.) De techniek van de Nederlandse
boekillustratie in de 19e eeuw Amstelveen 1995, p. 102.
16 See D. van Lente (ed.) op.cit 1995, p. 97.
17 See the publication by J.P. Hasebroek (publisher W.H. Kirberger,
Amsterdam) Dicht en ondicht, shown in Fons van der Linden, In linnen
gebonden. Nederlandse uitgeversbanden van 1840-1940 Veenendaal 1997
p. 113. It is an example of a woodburytype from a photograph. A
real photograph is pasted on to the front cover of C.H. Spurgeon,
His Life and Work (1877), as can be seen in Ruari McLean, Victorian
Publishers' Book-bindings in cloth and leather (Gordon Fraser 1974,
p. 140). (with thanks to Bram Schuytvlot).
18 Octave Uzanne, l'Art dans la décoration extérieure
des livres Paris 1898 (pp. 169, 172, 173, 180, 184, 185). With thanks
to Ed Schilders.
19 See Henk Eijssens (ed.) Distels in het weiland 1980 's Gavenhage
p. XL.
20 Catalogus van de verschillende beelden en groepen met geschiedkundig
overzicht. Nederlandsch Panopticum 1882 Amsterdam.
21 See B.P.M. Dongelmans, J. Immerzeel (1992): the Muzenalmanak,
which came into being at the beginning of the 19th century, contained
engravings or lithographs. The writers thus portrayed often complained
about the poor resemblance.
22 Whitman in the Brooklyn Eagle, quoted from Miles Orvell, The
real thing. Imitation and authenticity in American culture, 1880-1940
Chapel Hill/London 1989, p.8.
23 Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs. Images as History.
Matthew Brady to Walker Evans New York 1989 p. 28.
24 Cf. Charles Vergeer, Toen werden schoot en boezem lekkernij Amsterdam
1990, see also I. de Groot, Willem Witsen 2003.
25 Quotation from Rabb, Literature and photography.