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?
Weitere Artikel in diesem Heft:
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte Hefte
Band 89 (2026)
Band 88 (2025)
Band 87 (2024)
Band 86 (2023)
Band 85 (2022)
Band 84 (2021)
Band 83 (2020)
Band 82 (2019)
Band 81 (2018)
Band 80 (2017)
Band 79 (2016)
Jetzt die Zeitschrift uneingeschränkt lesen
Ähnliche Titel
Sie möchten monatlich über Neuerscheinungen und Veranstaltungen informiert werden?