keywords: subterranean photography, underwater photography, magnesium flash, labor, race
“[P]uisqu'on arrive à prendre sans difficulté un paysage en plein air, pourquoi, me disais-je, ne parviendrait-on pas à faire une photographie au fond de la mer?” - Louis Boutan, 1900
This paper identifies the ways in which human figures are deployed within “underworldly” landscapes of early subterranean and submarine photography, and how their presence or absence alters our reading of the photographic act. Louis Boutan’s La photographie sous-marine published at the end of the nineteenth century provides one case study for analysis, set against the documentation of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, by Charles Waldack roughly three decades earlier. The physical formats (and financial backing) of both photographic objects—one a kind of scientific memoir and manual, the other distributed as a set of commercial stereocards—orient their audience towards a particular reading of the images therein. Despite the obviously different contexts and motivations though, both series of photographs seek to represent features of extraordinary landscapes (settings which also pose extraordinary technical challenges), and both photographers frequently populate these images as a means to achieve their goals. Difficulties of access, support, and image capture in the context of subterranean and submarine photography, and the many physical dangers that lie therein (e.g. the crushing weight of equipment, the explosive medium of flash lighting, etc.), are ever-present reminders of the inseparability of the physical act of material production and the photographic image. Significantly, by inhabiting these captured scenes (or held just outside of view), the human body lends further weight to their extreme conditions, and the potential cost. The explicit, conspicuous intentions behind the inclusion of figures (e.g. providing a sense of scale) are outlined through various examples, aided by the firsthand accounts of Boutan and Waldack. But the photographs can also be read for more implicit and even unintended understandings of the role of the figure: in juxtaposing the two case studies of Boutan’s book and Waldack’s stereocards together, this paper seeks to underscore different forms of seen and unseen labor engaged in service to photographic production, ultimately revealing the figures as a destabilizing force to assumptions of authorship in the photographic act.
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Talia A. Perry
Independent Scholar
http://taliaperry.com/
How does the presence of a human figure alter our reading of a photograph, our assumptions of authorship and understanding of the physical production of a photographic act? Juxtaposing Louis Boutan’s La photographie sous-marine with Charles Waldack’s documentation of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, this paper identifies the ways in which human figures were deployed within the “underworldly” landscapes of early subterranean and submarine photography. Analysis of these images and the material constraints of their production, supported by firsthand accounts of Boutan and Waldack, underscores the persistent value of seen and unseen labor engaged in service to the photographic production.