“Art’s most mortal enemy”

In On Photography, from The Salon of 1859, Charles Baudelaire argues that photography is not and cannot be considered art. “This industry,” he writes, “by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy.”

Baudelaire would rather confine photography to its “true duty, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts.” He writes that photographing for tourism is okay, as is photography used to corroborate an astronomer’s hypotheses, or enlarging microscopic animals. Photography as archive is also okay: “Let it rescue from oblivion those tumbling ruins, those books, prints and manuscripts which time is devouring, precious things whose form is dissolving and which demand a place in the archives of our memory—— it will be thanked and applauded.”

But photography, he argues, cannot be part of the domain of art, because, lo! it doesn’t ad anything to our souls: “But if it be allowed to encroach upon the domain of the impalpable and the imaginary, upon anything whose value depends solely upon the addition of something of a man’s soul, then it will be so much the worse for us!”

I mean, okay. I get that it was 1859, and photography was a new kid on the art block. But if Baudelaire were alive today, would he really see photography as soulless? Why is he so threatened by photography-as-art in the first place?

Baudelaire had very nice hair

Pivoting to the Lewis Carroll poem “Photography Extraordinary”:

I have to be honest. I love poetry, but I don’t know how to read this one. Where is the image in the verse? I can’t visualize it.

“The Milk-and-Water School” <— is this the dark room? I thought we weren’t supposed to have food in there.

“Alas! she would not hear my prayer!” <— who isn’t hearing? I thought we were talking about schools. Does the school have a gender? Do we have a female photographer? (Please, let there be a female photographer)

…

“The Strong-Minded or Matter-of-Fact School” <— is this some reference to Baudelaire’s assertion that photography should only be matter-of-fact, and can never be art?

…

“Nothingness is my destiny!” <— still coming up empty on this one. Who is the speaker? Who is the speaker of the poem addressing? And what on earth does this have to do with photography? For a poem that purports to be about extraordinary photography, it is surprisingly lacking in visual details.