Proof of the Forgotten: A Benjaminian Reading of Daguerre’s Two Views of the Boulevard du Temple

Abstract

Photography fascinated Walter Benjamin. Indeed, he called it ‘the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction’ (1987, p.224). But one of its earliest manifestations, the daguerreotype, was less about mass reproduction than about magical replication and a shockingly new relationship between the past and the present. Although a number of inventors had been working toward the development of the photographic process, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s version galvanized the world, forever changing our relationship to history, memory, and aesthetics.¹ Benjamin’s work attests to his interest in Daguerre, particularly Daguerre’s Diorama. Daguerre revolutionized the familiar panorama, a form of popular entertainment which consisted simply of a monumentally wide painting of a landscape and/or narrative scene, with his Diorama, which added the element of temporality by simulating the passing of the hours of the day with changing lights (1999, p.690). Yet on the subject of Daguerre’s images Benjamin is silent,² very strangely considering that his two views of the Boulevard du Temple are the ones that changed history forever.