Paris, visual capital Cinema, photography, media

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

It could have been the first scene of a naturalistic novel a la Emile Zola: "Paris in the Spring. It is around 8:00am on the Boulevard du Temple near Place de la Republique. A sunny day. A man is having his shoes polished at the corner of this well known Boulevard often referred to as 'Boulevard du crime' throughout the nineteenth Century. This anonymous human being is about to make history... while remaining anonymous. If the event has nothing to do with a crime, it is related to what we, today, call a 'shooting'." On that day in 1838, Louis Daguerre, a former painter, a renown theatre set designer who is fascinated with light effects, takes what is known to be the very first photograph featuring a human being. First photo-shooting ever. And our unknown man is the first photographic "star" in the history of the world. In the footsteps of his friend Nicefore Niepce who took the very first photograph in 1826 (or 27), Daguerre invents the "daguerreotype" whose history coincides with the beginning of a true visual revolution. This revolution known as photography is still shaping today's consciousness to a point that our memory is now inseparable from pictures. By necessity or by accident Daguerre's invention carries another one with it: Paris. Paris becomes a photographic "subject." If we take a close look at Daguerre's 1838 picture, it is the landscape that we still have in front of our eyes when we visit Paris today and beyond that, when we evoke or invoke the name "Paris." In many ways, this is the time when Paris becomes Paris, when the "reality" of a city cannot be distinguished from its representations. If the first photographed human-subject is a Parisian, Paris becomes photography's allegory. Paris is now a persona. It is a theatre set, it is also a stage for Daguerre's protagonists. It will soon become a film set. During the year after his 1838 photograph of the Boulevard du Temple, Daguerre takes dozens of pictures of Paris, his new "subject." This includes the earliest known photo of the Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris in 1838 or 39. It is also in those years that Hugo (re)invents this old crumbling place of worship and writes his famous novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) that was later subjected to many cinematic adaptations. There is no accident in the fact that Paris makes a decisive entrance in the history of the visual field in what still counts today as the most photographed city in the world. In other words, Paris as we know it cannot be dissociated from its visual existence. And this visual presence is a region of our minds. "Cinema" plays a critical role in this context. The 19th century is coming to an end when on December 28, 1895 in a Salon set on the Boulevard des Capucines, the city of Enlightenments also known as a "City of Lights," becomes the capital of cinema when the Lumière brothers organize the very first film screening in history. And so on... Taught in English.