![]() Using these incontrovertible technical constraints to recreate the enigma stemmed in fact from the reformulation of the question. Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions, 1872 (Rejlander, G. Darwin used several of his portraits, together with the reconstituted facial expressions conceived by Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne (1862).))Ĭh. 1).(( Swedish photographer Oscar Gustav Rejlander (1813-1875) was well known for his ability to capture emotions and feelings. 2 Needless to say there were exceptions, such as the famous photographs featured by Charles Darwin in 1872, in The Expression of the Emotions…, but this prowess was due to the art of Oscar Rejlander and could not conceivably be reproduced in an ordinary studio (fig. If the question of expressivity in the realm of photography had never bothered anyone, it was simply because there was an obvious answer: the serious demeanour of nineteenth-century portraits was an inevitable offshoot of the lengthy poses, which made it impossible to capture the fleeting facial expression of a smile. The diagnosis had always been accepted as a given. And photography was to play a key role in appropriating this culture. Behind these contingencies however, a riveting situation was being played out: as the conventions of the portrait evolved, they were met by the emergence of a new expressive culture, reflecting the upsurge of the middle classes. Over-hasty researchers have readily assumed that the answer lay in circumstantial obstacles such as the length of pose or poor dental hygiene. On the cusp of the 2000s, however, a number of publications relaunched the debate on photographic expressivity by taking a more direct slant: why had nineteenth-century photographs produced such an array of severe faces compared to the joyful expressions that flourished in the following century? This enigma has returned to haunt specialised journals ever since, with images to prove the point. Among these cultural conventions, the semiotician evokes the ‘codes of expressivity’ developed in the field of the figurative arts.Įco’s brief comment did not carry enough impact to kindle any real curiosity. 1 In response to this analysis, Umberto Eco, together with art historian Ernst Gombrich, recalls the conventional nature of ‘imitative codes’. ![]() In his renowned article ‘Le message photographique’ (1961), Roland Barthes defines mimetic representation by the absence of code. Photographie, histoire, société, n° 6, février 2022, p. Le portrait photographique et la culture de l’expressivité», Transbordeur. As the standard bearer of this evolution the toothy smile was to establish itself as a photographic sign in its own right, a modernist embodiment of the sociability of the middle classes as they rose to become an unprecedented subject of historical research.Īndré Gunthert, « Un sourire de classe. ![]() This transformation was underpinned not only by the reflexivity of media representations but by the consecration of an ethos of authenticity in self-presentation, fostered by amateur photography and the cinema. ![]() The present article draws on the conventional aspect of the portrait to describe this evolution through the prism of an historical adaptation to a social norm: the shift from a culture of restraint to a culture of expressivity spanning the 1930s to the 1950s. Although frequently debated, the phenomenon linked to the development of the smile in twentieth-century portrait photography has always defied explanation.
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