Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View

Author(s): Rosalind Krauss

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Art Journal, Vol. 42, No. 4, The Crisis in the Discipline (Winter, 1982), pp. 311-319
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776691 .
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 's DiscursiveSpaces:
Photography
Landscape/View

By Rosalind Krauss
et us startwithtwoimages,identically volcanic heat finds its record. Despite all commonplace, the reflectionsof the rocks
titled Tufa Domes, Pyramid Lake, this, the rocks seem unreal and the space in the waterhave been carefullyrecreated,
Nevada. The first (Fig. 1) is a (recently) dreamlike, the tufa domes appear as if so that gravity and direction are now re-
celebrated photographmade by Timothy suspendedin a luminousether, unbounded stored to this space formerly awash with
O'Sullivan in 1868 that functions with and directionless. The brilliance of this the vague luminosityof too rapidlyexposed
special insistence within the art historical undifferentiatedground, in which water collodion.
construction of nineteenth-centuryland- and sky connect in an almost seamless But it is clear, of course, thatthe differ-
scape photography.The second (Fig. 2) is continuum,overpowersthematerialobjects ence between the two images-the photo-
a lithographiccopy of the first, produced within it, so that if the rocks seem to float, graphand its translation-is not a function
for the publicationof ClarenceKing's Sys- to hover, they do so as shape merely. The of the inspirationof the photographerand
tematic Geology in 1878.1 luminous ground overmasterstheir bulk, the insipidity of the lithographer.They
Twentieth-centurysensibility welcomes making them instead, the functionsof de- belong, instead, to two separatedomains
the original O'Sullivan as a model of the sign. The mysteriousbeauty of the image of culture, they assume differentexpecta-
mysterious, silent beauty to which land- is in this opulentflatteningof its space. tions in the user of the image, they convey
scape photographyhad access during the By comparison, the lithographis an ob- two distinctkinds of knowledge;in a more
early decades of the medium. In the photo- ject of insistentvisual banality.Everything recent vocabulary,one would say thatthey
graph, three bulky masses of rock are seen that is mysterious in the photographhas operate as representationswithintwo sep-
as if deployed on a kind of abstract,trans- been explained with supplemental,chatty aratediscursivespaces, as membersof two
parentchessboard, markingby their sepa- detail. Clouds have been massed in the different discourses. The lithographbe-
rate positions a retreatingtrajectoryinto sky. The far shore of the lake has been longs to the discourseof geology and, thus,
depth. A fanatical descriptive clarity has given a definitive shape. The surfaceof the of empirical science. In order for it to
bestowed on the bodies of these rocks a lake has been characterizedby little eddies functionwithinthis discourse,the ordinary
hallucinatorywealth of detail, so thateach and ripples. And most importantfor the elements of topographicaldescriptionhad
crevice, each granulartraceof the original demotion of this image from strange to to be restored to the image producedby
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Fig. 1 Timothy O'Sullivan, Tufa Domes, Pyramid Lake Fig. 2 PhotolithographafterO'Sullivan, TufaDomes, Pyramid
(Nevada), 1868. Lake, Publishedin King Survey report, 1875.
Winter1982 311
 is- J

'At

O'Sullivan. The coordinatesof a continu-

ous homogeneous space, mapped not so
much by perspectiveas by the cartographic
grid, had to be reconstructedin termsof a
coherent recession along an intelligibly Fig, 3 Samuel Bourne,A Road LinedwithPoplars, Kashmir,1863-70, albumen-silver
horizontal plane retreatingtowardsa defi- printfrom a glass negative, 815/16 x 11",Collection, PaulF. Walter,New York.
nite horizon. The geological data of the
tufa domes had to be grounded, coordi-
nated, mapped. As shapes afloat on a con-
tinuous, vertical plane, they would have
been useless.2
And the photograph?Within what dis-
cursive space does it operate?
Aesthetic discourse as it developed in
the nineteenthcenturyorganizeditself in-
creasingly aroundwhat could be called the .........
space of exhibition. Whetherpublicmuse-
um, official salon, world's fair, or private
showing, the space of exhibitionwas con-
stitutedin partby the continuoussurfaceof
wall, a wall increasingly unstructuredfor 'A
any purpose other than the display of art.
.........

The space of exhibition had otherfeatures

besides the gallery wall. It was also the 4?
groundof criticism, which is to say, on the
one hand, the groundof a writtenresponse
to the works' appearancein that special
context, and, on the other, the implicit
ground of choice---of either inclusion or
exclusion-with everythingexcludedfrom
the space of exhibition becoming margin- Fig. 4 Auguste Salzmann,Jerusalem, The TempleWall, WestSide, 1853-54,
alized with regard to its status as Art.3 salt print from a paper negative, 93/16 X /8", Collection, The Museum of Modern Art,
Given its function as the physical vehicle New York, Purchase.
of exhibition, the gallery wall became the -the wall--and to representit. diagonalorderingof the surface.No sooner
signifier of inclusion and, thus, can be The transformationof landscape after had this compressionoccurred,constituting
seen as constitutingin itself a representation 1860 into a flattened and compressedex- within the single easel paintinga represen-
of what could be called exhibitionality,or perienceof space spreadinglaterallyacross tation of the very space of exhibition,than
that which was developing as the crucial the surface was extremely rapid. It began other means of composingthis representa-
medium of exchange between patronsand with the insistent voiding of perspective, tion were employed: serial landscapes,
artists within the changing structureof art as landscape painting counteractedper- hung in succession, mimed the horizontal
in the nineteenth century. And in the last spectival recession with a variety of de- extension of the wall, as in Monet'sRouen
half of the century painting-particularly vices, among them sharp value contrast, Cathedralpaintings;or landscapes, com-
landscape painting-responded with its which had the effect of convertingthe or- pressed and horizonless, expandedto be-
own corresponding set of depictions. It thogonal penetrationof depth-effected, come the absolute size of the wall. The
began to internalizethe space of exhibition for example, by a lane of trees-into a synonymy of landscapeand wall-the one
312 Art Journal
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a representationof the other--of Monet's

late waterliliesis thusan advancedmoment
in a series of operationsin which aesthetic
discourse resolves itself around a repre-
sentation of the very space that groundsit
institutionally.
Needless to say, this constitutionof the
work of art as a representationof its own
space of exhibitionis in fact whatwe know
as the history of modernism. Thus, it is
now fascinatingto watchhistoriansof pho-
tography assimilating their mediumto the
logic of that history. For if we ask, once
again, within what discursive space does
the original O'Sullivan-as I describedit
at the outset-function, we have to answer:
that of the aesthetic discourse. And if we
ask, then, what it is a representationof, the
answer must be that within this space it is
constitutedas a representationof the plane
of exhibition, the surface of the museum,
the capacity of the gallery to constitutethe
objects it selects for inclusion as art.
But did O'Sullivan in his own day, the
1860s and 1870s, construct his work for
the aesthetic discourse and the space of
exhibition?Or did he createit for the scien-
tific/topographicaldiscoursewhich it more
or less efficiently serves? Is the interpreta-
tion of O'Sullivan's work as a representa-
tion of aesthetic values-flatness, graphic
design, ambiguity, and, behindthese, cer-
tain intentionstowardsaestheticsignifica-
tions: sublimity, transcendence-not a ret-
rospective constructiondesignedto secure
it as art?4And is this projectionnot illegiti-
mate, the composition of a false history?
T his questionhas a special method-
ological thrust from the vantage of
the present, as a newly organizedandener-
gized history of photographyis at work
constructingan account of the early years
of the medium. Centralto this account is
that type of photography,most of it topo-
Fig. 5 TimothyO'Sullivan,ShoshoneFalls (Idaho), 1868.
graphicalin character,originallyundertak- fragment, to generateambiguousoverlap;
en for the purposesof exploration,expedi- a perspective to which Galassi gives the
tion, and survey. Matted,framed,labeled, name "analytic," as opposedto the "syn-
these images now enterthe space of histor- thetic" constructive perspective of the
ical reconstructionthrough the museum. Renaissance-was fully developed by the
Decorously isolated on the wall of exhibi- late eighteenthcenturywithinthe discipline
tion, the objectscan now be readaccording of painting.The force of thisproof, Galassi
to a certainlogic, a logic thatinsistson their maintains, will be to rebutthe notion that
representationalcharacterwithin the dis- photographyis essentiallya "child of tech-
cursive spaceof art,in an attemptto "legit- nical ratherthanaesthetictraditions'"and,
imate" them. The term is PeterGalassi's, thus, an outsider to the internalissues of
and the issue of legitimacy was the focus aesthetic debateand to show, instead,that
of the Museum of Modern Art exhibition it is a product of that very same spirit of
Before Photography, which he organized. inquiry withinthe arts that welcomed and
In a sentence that has been repeatedby developedboth "analytic"perspectiveand
every reviewer of his argument, Galassi an empiricist vision. The radically fore-
sets up this questionof photography'sposi- shortened and elliptical sketches by Con-
tion with respectto the aestheticdiscourse: stable (and even Degas) can then be used
"The object here is to show thatphotogra- as models for a subsequentphotographic
phy was not a bastardleft by science on the practice, which in Galassi's exhibition
doorstepof art, buta legitimatechild of the turns out overwhelmingly to be that of
Westernpictorialtradition."5 topography:SamuelBourne,Felice Beato,
The legitimation that follows depends August Salzmann, CharlesMarville, and,
on somethingfarmoreambitiousthanprov- of course, TimothyO'Sullivan.
ing thatcertainnineteenth-centuryphotog- And the photographsrespond as they
raphershad pretensionsto being artists,or are bid. The Bourne of a road in Kashmir
theorizing that photographswere as good (Fig. 3), in its steep splitin values, empties
as, or even superiorto, paintings,or show- perspective of its spatial significanceand
ing that photographicsocieties organized reinvests it with a two-dimensionalorder
exhibitions on the model of Establishment every bit as powerfullyas a contemporary
salons. Legitimationsdependon going be- Monet. The Salzmann(Fig. 4), in its fanat-
yond the presentationof apparentmem- ical recordingof the textureof stone on a
bership in a given family; they demand, wall that fills the frame with a nearlyuni-
instead, the demonstrationof the internal, formtonalcontinuum,assimilatesits depic-
genetic necessity of such membership. tion of empiricaldetail to a representation
Galassi wants, therefore,to addressinter- of the pictorial infrastructure.And the
nal, formal structuresratherthanexternal, O'Sullivans (Figs. 1 and 5), with their
circumstantialdetails.To thisendhe wishes rock formationsengulfed by thatpassive,
to prove that the perspectiveso prominent blank, collodion sky, flatteninto the same
in nineteenth-centuryoutdoorphotography hypnotically seen but two-dimensionally
-a perspective that tends to flatten, to experienced order that characterizedthe
Winter 1982 313
Tufa Domes of Pyramid Lake. Viewing readjustmentof the eyes from plane to mass mediumwas madepossibleby mech-
the evidence on the walls of the museum, plane within the stereoscopic field is the anized printing techniques. Beginning in
we have no doubt that Art has not only representationby one part of the body of the 1850s but continuingalmost unabated
been intended, but has also been repre- what another part of the body, the feet, into the 1880s, the figures for stereo sales
sented: in the flattened, decorativelyuni- would do in passing throughreal space. are dizzying. As early as 1857 the London
fying drawingof "analytic" perspective. And it goes without saying that from this Stereoscopic Company had sold 500,000
physio-opticaltraversalof the stereofield, stereoscopes and, in 1859, was able to
B ut here is wherethe demonstrationanotherdifferencebetween it andpictorial
runs into difficulty. For Timothy space derives. This is a difference that
O'Sullivan's photographswere not pub- concerns the dimensionof time.
claim a cataloguelistingmorethan100,000
differentstereo views. 10
It is in this very term-view-by which
lished in the nineteenth century and the The contemporaryaccounts of what it the practice of stereoscopy identified its
only real public distribution they can be was like to look at stereographsall dilate object, that we can locate the particularity
shown to have hadwas throughthemedium on the length of time spent examiningthe of thatexperience. Firstof all, view speaks
of stereography.Mostof the famousO'Sul- contents of the image. For OliverWendell to the dramaticinsistence of the perspec-
livans-the Canyon de Chelly ruins from Holmes, Sr., a passionate advocate of tivally organized depth that I have been
the Wheeler Expedition, for example-- stereography,this perusalwas the response describing. This was often heightened,or
exist as stereographicviews, and it was to appropriateto the "inexhaustible"wealth acknowledged, by the makers of stereo
these that, in O'Sullivan's case, as in Wil- of detail provided by the image. As he views by structuringthe image arounda
liam Henry Jackson's, the wider public picks his way over this detailin his writing vertical markerin fore- or middle-ground
had access.6 Thus, if we began with a on stereography-in describing,for exam- that works to center the space, forminga
comparisonbetweentwo images--the pho- ple, his experienceof anE. & H.T. Anthony representationwithinthe visual field of the
tographand the lithographictranslation-- view up Broadway-Holmes enacts for eyes' convergence at a vanishing point.
we can continue with a comparison be- his readersthe protractedengagementwith Many of Timothy O'Sullivan's images
tween two cameras:a 9 x 12 platecamera the spectacledemandedby stereoviewing. organize themselves aroundsuch a center
and a camerafor stereoscopicviews. And By contrast, paintingsdo not require(and -the staff of a bare tree-trunk,the sheer
these two pieces of equipmentmarkdistinct as they become more modernist,certainly edge of a rock formation-whose compo-
domains of experience. do not support) this temporaldilation of sitional sense derivesfrom the specialsen-
Stereographicspaceis perspectivalspace attention,this minute-by-minute examining sations of the view. Given O'Sullivan's
raised to a higher power. Organizedas a of every inch of the ground. tendency to compose aroundthe diagonal
kind of tunnel vision, the experience of When Holmes characterizesthis special recession and centering of the view, it is
deep recessionis insistentand inescapable. modality of viewing, where "the mind not surprisingto find that in his one pub-
This experience is all the moreheightened feels its way into the very depths of the lished account of his work as a Western
by the fact that the viewer's own ambient picture," he has recourseto extrememental photographer he consistently speaks of
space is masked out by the optical instru- states-like hypnotism, "half-magnetic what he makes as "views" and what he
ment he must hold before his eyes. As he effects," and dream."At least the shutting does when making them as "viewing."
views the image in an ideal isolation, his out of surroundingobjects, and the con- Writingof the expeditionto PyramidLake,
own surrounds,with theirwalls andfloors, centrationof the whole attentionwhichis a he describesthe provisions,"amongwhich
are banishedfrom sight. The apparatusof consequence of this, producea dream-like may be mentioned the instruments and
the stereoscope mechanically focuses all exaltation," he writes, "in which we seem chemicals necessary for our photographer
attention on the matter at hand and pre- to leave the body behind us and sail away to 'work up his view.' " Of the Humboldt
cludes the visual meanderingexperienced into one strange scene after another, like Sink, he says, "It was a prettylocationto
in the museumgalleryas one's eyes wander disembodiedspirits."'8 work in, and viewing therewas as pleasant
from pictureto pictureand to surrounding The phenomenologyof the stereoscope work as could be desired."11Viewwas the
space. Instead, the refocusingof attention produces a situationthat is not unlike that term consistentlyused in the photographic
can occur only withinthe spectator'schan- of looking at cinema. Both involve the journals, as it was overwhelminglythe ap-
nel of vision constructed by the optical isolation of the viewer with an imagefrom pellationphotographers gave to theirentries
machine. which surroundinginterferenceis masked in photographicsalons in the 1860s. Thus,
The stereographicimage appearsmulti- out. Inboth, the imagetransportstheviewer even when consciously enteringthe space
layered, a steep gradientof differentplanes optically, while his body remains immo- of exhibition, they tended to choose view
stretching away from the nearby space, bile. In both, the pleasurederivesfromthe rather than landscape as their descriptive
into depth. The operationof viewing this experience of the simulacrum:the appear- category.
space involves scanning the field of the ance of reality from which any testing of Further,view addressesa notion of au-
image, moving from its lower left corner, the real-effectby actually,physically,mov- thorshipin which the naturalphenomenon,
say, to its upper right. That much is like ing through the scene is denied. And in the point of interest, rises up to confront
looking at a painting. But the actualexpe- both, the real-effect of the simulacrumis the viewer, seemingly withoutthe media-
rience of this scan is something wholly heightened by a temporaldilation. What tion of an individual recorder or artist,
different. As one moves, visually, through has been called the apparatusof cinematic leaving "authorship"of the views to their
the stereoscopictunnelfrominspectingthe process had, then, a certainproto-history publishers, ratherthanto the operators(as
nearestgroundto attendingto an object in in the institutionof stereography,just as they were called) who took the pictures.
the middle-distance,one has the sensation stereography'sown proto-historyis to be Thus, authorshipis characteristically made
of refocusing one's eyes. And then again, found in the similarly darkenedand iso- a function of publication, with copyright
into the farthest plane, another effort is lating but spectacularlyillusionistic space held by thevariouscompanies,e.g., ?Key-
made, and felt, to refocus.'7 of the diorama.9 And in the case of the stone Views, while the photographersre-
These micro-muscular efforts are the stereograph,as would laterbe the case for main anonymous. In this sense the phe-
kinestheticcounterpartto the sheerlyopti- film, the specific pleasuresthatseem to be nomenological characterof the view, its
cal illusion of the stereograph.They are a releasedby thatapparatus-the desiresthat exaggerateddepthand focus, opens onto a
kind of enactment,only on a very reduced it seems to gratify-led to the instantly second feature, which is the isolating of
scale, of whathappenswhena deepchannel wild popularityof the instrument. the object of that view. Indeed, it is a
of space is opened before one. The actual The diffusion of stereographyas a truly "point of interest," a naturalwonder, a
314 Art Journal
singularphenomenonthatcomes to occupy
this centeringof attention.This experience
of the singular is, as BarbaraStaffordhas
shown in an examinationof singularityas
a special category associated with travel
accounts beginning in the late eighteenth
century, foundedon the transferof author-
ship from the subjectivity of the artist to
the objective manifestationsof nature.12
For this reason, the institutionof the view
does not claim the imaginativeprojection
of an authorso muchas the legal protection
of propertyin the form of the copyright.
Finally, view registers this singularity,
this focal point, as one momentin a com-
plex representationof the world, a kindof
complete topographicalatlas. Forthe phys-
ical space within which the "views" were
kept was invariably a cabinet in whose
drawerswerecataloguedandstoreda whole
geographical system. The file cabinet is
very differentas an object fromthe wall or
the easel. It holds out the possibility of
storing and cross-referencingbits of infor-
mation and of collating them throughthe
particulargrid of a system of knowledge.
The elaboratecabinetsof stereoviews that
were part of the furnishingof nineteenth-
century middle-class homes as well as of
the equipmentof public librariescomprise
a compound representationof geographic
space. The spatialityof the view, its insis-
tent penetration, functions, then, as the
sensory model for a more abstractsystem
whose subjectis also space. View andland
surveyareinterdetermined andinterrelated.
What can be seen to emerge from this
analysis, then, is a system of historically
specific requirementsthat were satisfied
by the view and in relationto which view
formed a coherentdiscourse. Thatthis dis-
course is disjunctfrom what aestheticdis-
course intendsby the term "landscape" is
also, I hope, apparent.Just as the view's
constructionof spacecannotbe assimilated,
phenomenologically, to the compressed
and fragmentedspace of whatBeforePho-
tography calls analytic perspective,13so
the representationformed by the collec-
tivity of these views cannot be likened to
the representationorganizedby the space
of exhibition. The one composes an image
of geographic order; the other represents
the space of an autonomous Art and its
idealized, specialized History, which is
constituted by aesthetic discourse. The
complex collective representationsof that
qualitycalled style-period style, personal
style-are dependent upon the space of
exhibition; one could say they are a func-
tion of it. Modern art history is in that
sense a productof themostrigorouslyorga-
nized nineteenth-centuryspace of exhibi-
tion: the museum.14
It is Andr6 Malrauxwho has explained
to us how, in its turn,the museum, with its
succession of (representationsof) styles,
collectively organizesthe masterrepresen-
tation of Art. Having updatedthemselves
through the institutionof the modern art ple adduced by Stanley Cavell in relation
book, Malraux'smuseumsarenow "with- to aesthetic judgments, where he repeats
out walls," the galleries' contentscollec- Wittgenstein'squestion:"Could someone
tivized by means of photographicrepro- have a feeling of ardentlove or hope for
duction. But this serves only to intensify the space of one second-no matterwhat
the picture: precededor followed this second?"16
Thus it is that, thanks to the rather But this is the case with August Salz-
specious unity imposedby the photo-
mann, whose careeras a photographerbe-
graphicreproductionon a multiplicity gan in 1853andwas over in less thana year.
of objects, rangingfrom the statueto Little else on the horizon of nineteenth-
the bas-relief,frombas-reliefsto seal- centuryphotographyappearedonly to van-
ish quite so meteorically. But othermajor
impressions, and from these to the
plaques of the nomads, a "Babyloni- figures within this historyenterthis metier
an style" seems to emerge as a real and then leave it in less thana decade. This
is true of the careers of Roger Fenton,
entity, not a mere classification-as
something resembling,ratherthe life-
Gustave LeGray,and HenriLeSecq, all of
story of a greatcreator.Nothingcon-
them acknowledged "masters" of the art.
Some of these desertionsinvolveda return
veys more vividly and compellingly
the notionof a destinyshapinghuman to the more traditionalarts; others, like
ends than do the great styles, whose Fenton's, meanttakingup a totallydifferent
evolutions and transformationsseem field such as the law. Whatdo the spanand
like long scars that Fate has left, in natureof these engagementswiththe medi-
um mean for the concept of career? Can
passing, on the face of the earth.15
we study these "careers" with the same
H aving decidedthat nineteenth-cen-methodological presuppositions,the same
turyphotographybelongs in a muse- assumptionsof personalstyle and its con-
um, having decided that the genres of tinuity, that we bring to the careers of
aesthetic discourse are applicable to it, anothersort of artist?17
having decided thatthe arthistoricalmodel And what of the other great aesthetic
will map nicely onto this material,recent unity: oeuvre? Once again we encounter
scholars of photography have decided practices that seem difficult to bring into
(ahead of time) quite a lot. For one thing, conformity with what the termcomprises,
they have concludedthatgiven images are with its assumptionsthat the oeuvre is the
landscapes (ratherthanviews)andtheyare result of sustained intentionand that it is
thus certain about the discourse these im- organicallyrelatedto theeffortof its maker:
ages belong to and whatthey arerepresen- that it is coherent. One practice already
tationsof. Foranother(butit is a conclusion mentioned was the imperiousassumption
that is reached simultaneously with the of copyright, so that certainoeuvres, like
first), they have determinedthatotherfun- Matthew Brady's and FrancisFrith's, are
damental concepts of aesthetic discourse largely a function of the work of their
will be applicable to this visual archive. employees. Anotherpractice,relatedto the
One of these is the concept artist with its nature of photographiccommissions, left
correlative notion of sustainedand inten- large bodies of the "oeuvre" unachieved.
tional progress, to which we give the term An example is the HeliographicMissionof
career. The otheris thepossibilityof coher- 1851 in which LeSecq, LeGray, Baldus,
ence and meaningthatwill unfoldthrough Bayard, and Mestral(which is to say some
the collective body of work so produced, of the greatestfiguresin earlyphotographic
this constituting the unity of an oeuvre. history in France)did survey work for the
But, it can be argued, these are termsthat Commission des MonumentsHistoriques.
nineteenth-centurytopographicphotogra- Theirresults, some 300 negativesin which
phy tends not only not to support,but also were recordedmedievalarchitectureabout
to open to question. to submitto restoration,notonly werenever
The conceptartistimplies morethanthe publishedor exhibitedby the Commission,
mere fact of authorship;it also suggests but were nevereven printed.This is analo-
that one must go throughcertain steps to gous to a directorshootinga film butnever
earn the right to claim the condition of having the footage developed, hence never
being an author,the word artist somehow seeing the rushes. How would the resultfit
semanticallybeing connectedwith the no- into the oeuvre of this director?1s
tion of vocation. Generally, "vocation" Thereare otherpractices,otherexhibits,
implies an apprenticeship,a juvenilia, a in the archivethatalso test the applicability
learning of the traditionof one's craft, the of the concept oeuvre. One of these is the
gaining of an individuatedview of thattra- body of work that is too meager for this
dition througha process thatincludesboth notion; the other is the body that is too
success and failure. If this, or at least some large. Canwe imaginean oeuvreconsisting
partof it, is what is necessarilyincludedin of one work? The history of photography
the termartist, can we thenimaginesome- tries to do this with the single photographic
one being an artistforjust one year?Would effort ever producedby AugustSalzmann,
this not be a logical (some would say, a lone volume of archaeological photo-
grammatical)contradiction,like the exam- graphs(of greatformalbeauty), some por-
Winter1982 315

tion of which are known to have been
takenby his assistant.19 And, attheopposite
extreme, can we imagine an oeuvre con-
sisting of 10,000 works?
Eugene Atget's labors produceda vast
body of work which he sold over the years
of its production, roughly 1895-1927, to
various historical collections, such as the
Bibliothequede la Ville de Paris,the Mus~e
de la Ville de Paris (Musee Carnavalet),
the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Monu-
ments Historiques, as well as to commer-
cial builders and artists. The assimilation
of this workof documentationintoa specif-
ically aesthetic discourse began in 1925
with its notice and publicationby the Sur-
realists and was followed, in 1929, by its
placement within the photographicsensi-
bility of the GermanNew Vision.20 Thus
began the various partial viewings of the
10,000-piece archive;each view the result
of a selection intended to make a given
aesthetic or formalpoint.
The repetitive rhythm of accumulation
that interestedthe Neue Sachlichkeitcould
be found and illustratedwithinthis materi-
al, as could the collage sensibility of the
Surrealists, who were particularlydrawn
to the Atget shopfronts, which they made
famous. Other selections sustainother in-
terpretationsof the material.The frequent
visual superimpositionsof objectandagent,
as when Atget himself is captured as a
reflection in the glazed entranceof the caf6
he is photographing,permit a reading of
the work as reflexive, picturing its own
conditions of making. Other readings of
the images are more architectonicallyfor-
mal. They see Atget managingto locate a
point around which the complex spatial
trajectoriesof the site will unfold with an
especially clarifyingsymmetry.Most often
images of parks and ruralscenes are used
for such analyses.
But each of these readingsis partial,like
316 Art Journal
LA::
Fig. 6 Eugene Atget, Verrieres,coin pittoresque, 1922, printing-outpaper,
97/16 x 71/16", Collection, The Museumof ModernArt, New York, Abbot-Levy
Collection, PartialGift of ShirleyC. Burden.
tiny core samples thatare extractedfrom a delight and thrill us, and that in this
vast geological field, each displaying the ambitionhe failed as often as not. Or
presence of a different ore. Or like the we could assume thathe beganphoto-
blindmen's elephant. Ten thousandpieces graphing as a novice and gradually,
are a lot to collate. Yet, if Atget's work is through the pedagogical device of
to be considered art, and he an artist, this work, learnedto use his peculiar,re-
collation must be made;we mustacknowl- calcitrantmediumwith economy and
edge ourselves to be in the presenceof an sureness, so that his work became
oeuvre. The Museumof ModernArt'sfour- betterand betteras he grew older. Or
part exhibition of Atget, assembledunder we could point out that he worked
the alreadyloaded titleAtgetand theArtof both for others and for himself and
Photography, moves briskly towards the that the work he did for himself was
solution of this problem, always assuming better, because it served a more de-
that the model thatwill serve to ensurethe mandingmaster.Orwe could say that
unity for this archive is the concept of an it was Atget's goal to explainin visual
artist's oeuvre. For what else could it be? terms an issue of great richness and
John Szarkowski,afterrecognizingthat, complexity-the spiritof his own cul-
from the point of view of formalinvention, ture-and that in service to this goal
the work is extremely uneven, speculates he was willing to acceptthe resultsof
on why this should be so: his own best efforts, even when they
There are a numberof ways to inter- did not rise above the role of simple
records.
pret this apparentincoherence. We I believe that all of these explana-
could assume thatit was Atget's goal
to make glorious picturesthat would tions are in some degree true, but the
last is especially interesting to us,
 Atget's oeuvre, the numberswere seen as aestheticanima. Whatthey found, instead,
since it is so foreign to our under- was a cardcatalogue.
providingthe all-importantcode to the art-
standingof artisticambition.It is not ist's intentions and the work's meaning. With this in mind we get a verydifferent
easy for us to be comfortablewith the Maria Morris Hambourghas finally and answer to various earlier questions, like
idea that an artist might work as a
most definitively decipheredthis code, to the problem of why Atget photographed
servantto an idea largerthanhe. We
find in it the systematizationof a catalogue certain subjects piecemeal, the image of a
have been educated to believe, or
of topographicsubjects, divided into five fagade separatedby months or even years
rather, to assume, that no value tran- from the view of the same building'sdoor-
scends the value of the creativeindi- major series and many smaller sub-series
vidual. A logical corollary of this
and groups.24The namesgiven to the vari- way or window mullions or wrought-iron
ous series and groupings,nameslike Land- work. The answer, it would seem, lies less
assumption is that no subject matter in the conditions of aesthetic success or
except the artist's own sensibility is scape-Documents, PicturesqueParis, En-
virons, Old-France, etc., establish as the failurethanin the requirementsof the cata-
quite worthyof his best attention.21 master, largeridea for the worka collective logue and its categoricalspaces.
This inching forward from the normal picture of the spiritof Frenchculture-not Subject is the fulcrumin all of this. Are
categories of descriptionof aestheticpro- unlike, we could say, the undertakingof the doorways and the ironworkbalconies
duction-formal success/formal failure; Balzac in the ComidieHumaine.In relation Atget's subjects, his choices, the manifest
apprenticeship/maturity;public commis- to this master subject, Atget's vision can expression of him as active subject, think-
sion/personal statement-towards a posi- then be organizedarounda set of intentions ing, willing, intending, creating?Or are
tion that he acknowledges as "foreign to that are socio-aesthetic, so to speak; he they simply (althoughthereis nothingsim-
our understandingof artistic ambition," becomes photography's great visual an- ple in this) subjects, the functions of the
namely, work "in the service of an issue thropologist. The unifying intentionof the catalogue, to which Atget himself is sub-
larger than self-expression," evidently oeuvre can then be understoodas a contin- ject? Whatpossible priceof historicalclar-
troubles Szarkowski. So that just before uing search for the representationof the ity arewe willing to pay in orderto maintain
breaking off this trainof thoughthe medi- moment of interface between natureand the formerinterpretationover the latter?
tates on why Atget revisited sites (some- culture, as in the juxtapositionof the vines Everything that has been put forward
times afterseveralyears)to choosedifferent growing beside a farmhousewindow cur- about the need to abandonor at least to
aspects of, say, a given buildingto photo- tained in a lace representationof schema- submitto a seriouscritiquethe aesthetically
graph. Szarkowski'sanswerresolvesitself tized leaves (Fig. 6). But this analysis, derived categories of authorship,oeuvre,
in terms of formal success/formal failure interesting and often brilliant as it is, is and genre (as in landscape) obviously
and the categories of artistic maturation once again only partial.The desire to rep- amounts to an attempt to maintainearly
thatareconsistentwiththenotionof oeuvre. resent the paradigmnature/culturecan be photographyas an archive and to call for
His own persistence in thinkingaboutthe tracedin only a smallfractionof theimages the sort of archaeologicalexaminationof
work in relation to this aesthetic model and then, like the trailof an elusive animal, this archivethat Michel Foucaultboth the-
surfaces in his decision to continueto treat it dies out, leaving the intentionsas mute orizes andprovidesa modelfor. Describing
it in terms of stylistic evolution:"The ear- and mysteriousas ever. the analysis to which archaeologysubmits
lier pictures show the tree as completeand Whatis interestingin this case is thatthe the archive in order to reveal the condi-
discrete, as an object againsta ground;as Museum of Modem Art and MariaMorris tions of its discursiveformations,Foucault
centrally positioned within the frame; as Hambourghold in theirhands the solution writes that
frontally lighted, from behind the photog- to this mystery, a key thatwill not so much
[They] must not be understoodas a
rapher'sshoulder.The laterpicturesshow unlock the system of Atget's aestheticin- set of determinationsimposed from
the tree radically cut by the frame, asym- tentions as dispel them. And this example
the outside on the thoughtof individ-
metricallypositioned, andmore obviously seems all the more informativeas it dem- uals, or inhabitingit from the inside,
inflected by the quality of light that falls onstrates the resistance of the museolo- in advance as it were; they constitute
upon it.'"22 This is what produces the gical and arthistoricaldisciplinesto using ratherthe set of conditionsin accord-
"elegiac" mood of some of the late work. thatkey. ance with which a practice is exer-
But this whole matterof artisticintention The coding system Atget appliedto his
and stylistic evolution must be integrated images derives from the card files of the cised, in accordancewith which that
with the "idea largerthan he" that Atget libraries and topographiccollections for practicegives riseto partiallyortotally
new statements, and in accordance
can be thoughtto have served.If the 10,000 which Atget worked.His subjectsareoften
with which it can be modified. [The
images form Atget's picture of the larger standardized, dictated by the established relations establishedby archaeology]
idea, thenthatidea can informus of Atget's categories of survey and historicaldocu- are not so much limitationsimposed
aesthetic intentions, for there will be a mentation. The reason many of Atget's
on the initiative of subjects as the
reciprocal relation between the two, one street images uncannilyresemblethe pho- field in which thatinitiativeis articu-
inside, the otheroutside the artist. tographs by Marville taken a half century lated (without however constituting
To get hold, simultaneously,of thislarg- earlier is that both are functions of the
its center), rules thatit puts into oper-
er idea and of Atget's elusive intentionsin same documentarymaster-plan.25 A cata- ation (without it having invented or
making this vast archive("It is difficult," logue is not so much an idea as it is a formulatedthem), relationsthatpro-
Szarkowskiwrites, "to namean important mathesis, a system of organization.It sub-
vide it with a support(withoutit being
artist of the modernperiod whose life and mits not so much to intellectualas to insti- either their final result or their point
intention have been so perfectly withheld tutional analysis. And it seems very clear of convergence). [Archaeology]is an
from us as those of EugeneAtget"), it was that Atget's work is thefunction of a cata-
attemptto reveal discursivepractices
long believed to be necessary to decipher logue thathe had no handin inventingand in their complexity and density; to
the code providedby Atget's negativenum- for which authorshipis an irrelevantterm. show thatto speak is to do something
bers. Each of the 10,000 plates is num- The normalconditionsof authorshipthat
bered. Yet the numbers are not strictly the Museum wishes to maintain tend to -something other than to express
what one thinks.26
successive; they do not organizethe work collapse underthis observation,leadingus
chronologically; they sometimes double to a ratherstartlingreflection.The Museum Everywhereat presentthereis an attempt
back on each other.23 undertook to crack the code of Atget's to dismantlethe photographicarchive-the
For researchers into the problem of negative numbersin order to discover an set of practices, institutions,and relation-
Winter1982 317
ships to which nineteenth-century photog-
raphy originally belonged-and to reas-
semble it within the categoriespreviously
constitutedby artand its history.27It is not
hard to conceive of what the inducements
for doing so are, but it is more difficult to ism. A catastrophist,Kingreadthe geo-
understandthe tolerance for the kind of
incoherenceit produces.
Notes
1 Clarence King, Systematic Geology,
1878, is Vol. of
1 ProfessionalPapers
of the EngineerDepartmentU.S. Army,
7 vols. & atlas, Washington, D.C.,
U.S. Government Printing Office,
1877-78.
2 The cartographicgrid onto which this
informationis reconstructedhas other
purposesbesides the collationof scien-
tific information. As Alan Trachten-
berg argues,the government-sponsored this argument,thereis an equalamount
Westernsurveys were intendedto gain
access to the mineralresourcesneeded
for industrialization.It was an industrial made greatefforts to publishas partof
as well as a scientificprogramthatgen-
eratedthis photography,which "when
viewed outsidethecontextof thereports
it accompaniedseems to perpetuatethe
landscapetradition."AndTrachtenberg
continues:"The photographsrepresent
an essential aspect of the enterprise,a
formof recordkeeping;theycontributed
to the federal government's policy of
supplying fundamentalneeds of indus-
trialization,needs for reliabledatacon-
cerning raw materials,and promoteda
public willingness to supportgovern-
ment policy of conquest, settlement,
and exploitation." Alan Trachtenberg,
The Incorporation of America, New
York, Hill andWang, 1982, p. 20.
3 In his importantessay "L'espace de
l'art," Jean-Claude Lebensztejn dis-
cusses the museum'sfunction,since its
relatively recent inception, in deter- 5 Peter Galassi, Before Photography,
mining what will count as Art: "The
museum has a double but complemen-
tary function: to exclude everything 6 See the chapter "Landscape and the
else, andthroughthis exclusionto con-
stitutewhatwe meanby the wordart.It
does not overstatethe case to say that
the conceptof artunderwenta profound
transformation when a space, fashioned
for its very definition, was opened to
contain it." In Lebensztejn, Zigzag,
Paris, Flammarion,1981, p. 41.
4 The treatmentof Westernsurvey pho-
tography as continuous with painterly
depictions of nature is everywhere in
the literature.BarbaraNovak, Weston
Naef, and ElisabethLindquist-Cockare
three specialists who see this work as
an extension of those landscape sen-
sibilities operative in American nine-
teenth-centurypainting,with transcen-
dentalistfervorconstantlyconditioning
the way natureis seen. Thus, the by-
now standardargumentaboutthe King/
O'Sullivan collaboration is that this
318 Art Journal
visual materialamountsto a proof-by-
photography of creationism and the
presence of God. King, it is argued,
resisted both Lyell's geological uni-
formitarianismandDarwin'sevolution-
logical records of the Utah and Nevada
landscapeas a series of acts of creation
in which all species were given their
permanentshape by a divine creator.
The great upheavalsand escarpments,
the dramatic basalt formations were, it 10 Edward
is argued, all producedby natureand
photographedby O'Sullivan as proof
of King's catastrophistdoctrine. With
this mission to perform, the Western
photography of O'Sullivan becomes
continuouswith the landscapevision of
Bierstadtor Church.
Although there is some supportfor
of supportfor its opposite:King was a 11 "Photographsfromthe HighRockies,"
serious scientist, who, for example,
the findings of his survey Marsh's
palaeontologicalfinds, which he knew
full well providedone of the important
"missing links" needed to give empir-
ical support to Darwin's theory. Fur-
thermore,as we haveseen, O'Sullivan's
photographsin their lithographicform
function as neutralized,scientific testi-
mony in the context of King's report;
the transcendentalists'God does not
inhabit the visual field of Systematic
Geology. See, BarbaraNovak, Nature
and Culture, New York, Oxford Uni- 12 Thus Staffordwrites, "The conceptthat
versity Press, 1980; Weston Naef, Era
of Exploration,New York, The Metro-
politan Museum of Art, 1975;and Elis-
abeth Lindquist-Cock, Influence of
Photography on AmericanLandscape
Painting, New York, GarlandPress,
1977.
New York, The Museum of Modemrn finds aesthetic expression. . . . The
Art, 1981, p. 12.
Published Photograph," in Naef, Era
ofExploration. In 1871 the Government
Printing Office published a catalogue
of Jackson's work as, Catalogue of
Stereoscopic, 6 x 8 and 8 x 10 Photo-
graphs by Wmin. H. Jackson.
7 The eye is not actually refocusing, of
course. Rather, given the nearnessof
the image to the eyes and the fixity of
the head in relation to it, in order to
scan the space of the image a viewer
must readjustand recoordinatethe two
eyeballs from point to point as vision
moves over the surface.
8 OliverWendellHolmes, "Sun-Painting
and Sun-Sculpture,"AtlanticMonthly,
VIII(July 1861), 14-15. Thediscussion
of the view of Broadway occurs on
Page 17. Holmes's other two essays
appearedas "The Stereoscopeand the
Stereograph," Atlantic Monthly, III
(June 1859), pp. 738-48; and "Doings
of the Sunbeam," Atlantic Monthly,
XII (July 1863), pp. 1-15.
9 See, Jean-LouisBaudry, "The Appa-
ratus," CameraObscura,no. 1 (1976),
pp. 104-26, originallypublishedas "Le
Dispositif," Communications,No. 23
(1975), pp. 56-72; and Baudry,"Cine-
ma: Effets ideologiques produits par
l'appareil de base," Cinithique, No.
7-8 (1979), pp. 1-8.
W. Earle, ed., Points of View:
TheStereographin America:A Cultural
History, Rochester, N.Y., The Visual
Studies WorkshopPress, 1979, p. 12.
In 1856 RobertHuntin theArtJournal
reported,"The stereoscopeis now seen
in every drawing-room;philospherstalk
learnedly upon it, ladies are delighted
with its magic representation,and chil-
drenplay with it." Ibid., p. 28.
Harper's Magazine, XXXIX (Septem-
ber 1869), pp. 465-75. In this article
Tufa Domes, Pyramid Lake finds yet
one more place of publication, in a
crudetranslationof the photograph,this
time as an illustrationto the author's
adventure narrative. Thus one more
imaginative space is projectedonto the
blank, collodion screen. This time, in
responseto the accountof the nearcap-
size of the explorationparty'sboat, the
engraverwhips the watersinto a dark-
ened frenzy and the sky into banks of
lowering stormclouds.
true history is naturalhistory emanci-
pates the objects of nature from the
government of man. For the idea of
singularity it is significant .., that
geological phenomena-taken in their
widest sense to includespecimensfrom
the mineralkingdom-constitute land-
scape forms in which naturalhistory
final stage in the historicizingof nature
sees the productsof historynaturalized.
In 1789, the German savant Samuel
Witte-basing his conclusions on the
writingsof Desmarets,DulucandFaujas
de Saint-Fond-annexed the pyramids
of Egypt for nature,declaringthatthey
were basalt eruptions;he also identi-
fied the ruins of Persepolis, Baalbek,
Palmyra,as well as the Templeof Jupi-
ter at Agrigento and the Palace of the
Incas in Peru, as lithic outcroppings."
BarbaraM. Stafford,"TowardRoman-
tic Landscape Perception: Illustrated
Travels and the Rise of 'Singularity'as
an AestheticCategory,"ArtQuarterly,
n.s. I (1977), pp. 108-9. She concludes
her studyof "the cultivationof tastefor
the naturalphenomenonas singularity,"
by insistingthat"the lone naturalobject
. . need not be interpretedas human
surrogates;on the contrary, [the 19th
century Romantic landscapepainter's]
 isolated, detachedmonolithsshouldbe
placed within the vitalist aesthetic tra-
dition--emerging from the illustrated
voyage-that valued the naturalsingu-
lar. One might referto this traditionas
that of a 'neue Sachlichkeit' in which
the regard for the specifics of nature
produces a repertoryof animatepartic-
ulars." Pp. 117-18.
13 For anotherdiscussion of Galassi's ar-
gument with relation to the roots of
"analytic perspective" in seventeenth-
centuryoptics andthe cameraobscura,
see, Svetlana Alpers, The Art of De-
scribing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth
Century, University of Chicago Press,
1983, Chapter2.
14 Michel Foucaultopens a discussion of
the museum in "Fantasia of the Li-
brary," in Language, Counter-Memo-
ry, Practice, trans.D. F. Bouchardand
S. Simon, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1977, pp. 87-109. See,
also, EugenioDonato, "The Museum's
Furnace: Notes toward a Contextual
Reading of Bouvard and Picuchet,"
TextualStrategies:Perspectivesin Post-
Structuralist Criticism, ed. Josue V.
Harari,Ithaca,CornellUniversityPress,
1979; and Douglas Crimp, "On the
Museum's Ruins," October, No. 13
(Summer 1980), pp. 41-57.
15 Andre Malraux, "Museum without
Walls," The Voices of Silence, Prince-
ton, Princeton University Press, Bol-
lingen Series XXIV, 1978, p. 46.
16 Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What
We Say?, New York, Scribners, 1969,
p. 91, n. 9.
17 Students of photography'shistory are
not encouragedto questionwhetherart
historical models might (or might not)
apply. The session on the history of
photography at the 1982 College Art 20 Man Ray arrangedfor publicationof
Association meeting (a session proudly
introducedas the fruitsof realscholarly
researchat last appliedto this formerly
unsystematically studied field) was a
display of what can go wrong. In the
paper"CharlesMarville,PopularIllus-
trator:Origins of a PhotographicAes-
thetic," presentedby ConstanceKane 21 MariaMorrisHambourgandJohnSzar-
Hungerford,the model of the necessary
internal consistency of an oeuvre en-
couraged the idea thattherehad to be a
stylistic connectionbetween Marville's
early practice as an engraver and his 22 Ibid., p. 21.
laterwork as a photographer.The char- 23 The first published discussion of this
acterizationsof style this promotedwith
regardto Marville'sphotographicwork
(e.g., sharpcontrastsof light and dark,
hard,crispcontours)werenot only hard
to see, consistently, but when these did
apply they did not distinguish him in
any way fromhis fellows on the Mission
Heliographique. For every "graphic"
Marville,it is possibleto findanequally
graphicLeSecq.
18 An example of this is the nearly four
miles of footage shot by Eisenstein in LXI (September1979), p. 461.
Mexico for his projectQue VivaMexi- 24 Maria Morris Hambourg, "Eugene
co. Sent to Californiawhere it was de- Atget, 1857-1927: The Structureof the
veloped, this footage was never seen Work," unpublished Ph.D. disserta-
by Eisenstein, who was forced to leave tion, ColumbiaUniversity, 1980.
the U.S. immediately upon his return 25 See, Charles Marville, Photographs
from Mexico. The footage was then of Paris 1852-1878, New York, The
cannibalized by two Americaneditors French Institute/Alliance Frangaise,
to compose Thunderover Mexico and 1981. This containsan essay, "Charles
Time in the Sun. Neither of these is Marville'sOld Paris," by MariaMorris
supposed to be part of Eisenstein's Hambourg.
oeuvre. Only a "shootingchronology" 26 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of
assembledby Jay Leydain the Museum Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan
of ModernArt now exists. Its statusin Smith, New York, Harperand Row,
relation to Eisenstein's oeuvre is obvi- 1976, pp. 208-9.
ously peculiar. But given Eisenstein's 27 Thus far the work of Alan Sekula has
nearly ten years of filmmakingexperi- been the one consistent analysis of the
ence at the time of the shooting, given history of photographyto attack this
also the state of the art of cinema in effort. See, Alan Sekula, "The Traffic
termsof the body of materialthatexisted in Photographs," Art Journal, XLI
by 1930 and the extent to which this (Spring 1981), pp. 15-25; and "The
had been theorized, it is probablethat InstrumentalImage:Steichenat War,"
Eisenstein had a more complete sense, Artforum, XIII (December 1975). A
from the script and his working con- discussion of the rearrangementof the
ception of the film, of what he had archive in relationto the need to protect
made as a "work"---even though he the values of modernismis mountedby
never saw it-than the photographers Douglas Crimp's"The Museum'sOld/
of the Mission Heliographiquecould The Library's New Subject," Para-
have hadof theirs.The historyof Eisen- chute, (Spring 1981).
stein's project is documented in full
detail in Sergei Eisenstein and Upton RosalindKrauss is Professor of Art
Sinclair, TheMakingand Unmakingof History at HunterCollege, C. U.N.Y.,
"Que Viva Mexico," ed. Harry M. and an editor of October.
GeduldandRonaldGottesman,Bloom-
ington, IndianaUniversityPress, 1970.
19 See, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "A
Photographerin Jerusalem, 1855: Au-
guste SalzmannandHis Times," Octo-
ber, No. 18 (Fall 1981), p. 95. This
essay raises some of the issues about
the problematicnatureof Salzmann's
work consideredas oeuvre thatareen-
gaged above.
four photographsby Atget in La Rdvo-
lutionSurrialiste, threein theJune1926
issue, and one in the December 1926
issue. The exhibition Film und Foto,
Stuttgart,1929, includedAtget, whose
work was also reproducedin Foto-Auge,
Stuttgart,WedekindVerlag, 1929.
kowski, The WorkofAtget: Volume1,
Old France, New York, The Museum
of ModernArt, and Boston, New York
GraphicSociety, 1981,pp. 18-19.
problem characterizes it as follows:
"Atget's numberingsystemis puzzling.
His picturesare not numberedin a sim-
ple serial system, but in a confusing
manner.In many cases, low-numbered
photographsare dated later than high-
numbered photographs, and in many
cases numbers are duplicated." See,
BarbaraMichaels, "An Introductionto
the Dating and Organizationof Eugene
Atget's Photographs"TheArtBulletin,
Winter 1982 319