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Francis Wey and the Discourse of Photography as Art in France in the Early 1850s: ‘Rien n’est beau que le vrai; mais il faut le choisir’
Author(s) -
Denton Margaret
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.00348
Subject(s) - photography , realm , harmony (color) , subject (documents) , art , art history , history of photography , visual arts , sociology , history , archaeology , library science , computer science
In the last two decades writers on photography have been critical of the practice of designating nineteenth–century photography as art, exposing it as part of the modernist enterprise of stripping the photographs of their utilitarian and social functions – or at least reducing the importance of those functions – so that they can enter the realm of high art in a purified state. However, photography as art was one of the discourses that developed in the nineteenth century. The beginnings of this discourse in France are the subject of this article, specifically, the writings of Francis Wey, writer, linguist, critic and member of the Société héliographique, which was founded in 1851 to promote photography. This article examines Wey’s attempts to situate photography within a general aesthetic discourse in which traditional principles of harmony are reconciled with Realist aims.