2003
MMLA
New Histories of Writing II:
Technologies
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.