This essay aims to complicate our understanding of photographic materialities. Tracing the object biography of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre's View of the Boulevard du Temple, taken in 1838—one of the most prominent photographs from the medium's formative period—helps to reveal photography's character as not only reproductive but also reproducible. Variant photographic sources of the same motif can result in various histories that inform and transcribe each other. These multiple layers of meaning turn each photographic representation into a palimpsest loaded with information that is both visible and invisible, present and absent. A closer look at Daguerre's photograph unfolds a puzzling photographic ontology that deals with present images but an absent picture. This case evokes a pivotal question for the medium's historiography: Upon what traces are we basing our photographic histories?
Other articles in this issue:
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte Issues
Volume 88 (2025)
Volume 87 (2024)
Volume 86 (2023)
Volume 85 (2022)
Volume 84 (2021)
Volume 83 (2020)
Volume 82 (2019)
Volume 81 (2018)
Volume 80 (2017)
Volume 79 (2016)
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