Australian Journal of French Studies
Collections de portraits : des femmes obsédées par une nouvelle réalité
Abstract
Cet article examine l’impact social d’un type d’image – le portrait photographique – dont la popularité s’accroît au sein du Paris du Second Empire. Plus précisément, il examine les textes de Baudelaire et Zola qui mettent en scène des femmes obsédées par leur collection de portraits photographiques. Ce qui pousse ces personnages à regarder incessamment ces portraits prendrait sa source dans le Nouveau Paris du
This article examines the social impact of one specific type of image in nineteenth-century Parisian culture—photographic portraiture—which rose to popularity during the Second Empire. Specifically, it examines texts by Baudelaire and Zola that feature women obsessed with collecting people’s photographs and maintains that what impels their women characters to gaze endlessly at portraits originates in the New Paris of that period. In a society of advertising posters and spectacles, the artificial representation of human beings—the portrait—ends up replacing real individuals. Baudelaire and Zola’s Parisians venerate their portraits, which they raise to celebrity status. Building on the work of Guy Debord, this essay argues that one can see the “power of images” in its nascent form in the literary works of Baudelaire and Zola that explore the seductive power of images. Their representations of society’s preoccupation with the visual foreshadows our own obsession with images in an increasingly digital culture, and ultimately, our reliance on social media, such as “portraits” on Facebook.