HF The History of Photography 600pág

3 Phantoms of photography
TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE made a remarkable forecast of photography in chapter r8
of his book Giphantie (1760)1 -an anagram on the author's Christian name. The
English translation is aptly subtitled 'A view of what has passed, what is now passing,
and during the present century what will pass in the world', for Giphantie is a book
of fantasies or prophetic fiction a la Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. It is the supposed
narrative of a person who is carried to a mysterious island, Giphantie, in the quicksands
of the desert. The Governor of the island, which is inhabited by 'elementary
(sic) [elemental] spirits', shows the traveller into a room where he sees from the
window a storm at sea. Unable to believe his eyes at the sight of the ocean in the
middle of Africa, he runs to look out of the window, but alas, there is no window,
which he notices only when he bangs his head against something hard. Stunned, he
draws back, and the Governor explains :
That window, that vast horizon, those black clouds, that raging sea, are all but a
picture . ... You know that the rays oflight, reflected from different bodies, form
a picture, and paint the image reflected on all polished surfaces, for instance, on
the retina of the eye, on water, and on glass. The elementary (sic) [elemental] spirits
have sought to fix these fleeting images ; they have composed a subtle matter,
very viscous and quick to harden and dry, by means of which a picture is formed
in the twinkling of an eye. They coat a piece of canvas with this matter, and hold
it in front of the objects they wish to paint. The first effect of this canvas is similar
to that of a mirror; one sees there all objects, near and far, the image of which
light can transmit. But what a glass cannot do, the canvas by means of its viscous
matter, retains the images. The mirror represents the objects faithfully, but retains
them not; our canvas shows them with the same exactness, and retains them all.
This impression of the image is instantaneous, and the canvas is immediately carried
away into some dark place. An hour later the impression is dry, and you have a
picture the more valuable in that it cannot be imitated by art or destroyed by
time . ... The correctness of the drawing, the truth of the expression, the stronger
or weaker strokes, the gradation of the shades, the rules of perspective, all these
we leave to nature, who with a sure and never-erring hand, draws upon our canvasses
images which deceive the eye.
It is quite possible that this episode was inspired by one of the fables of Fenelon
describing a voyage to an imaginary country,2 in which the following passage occurs :
There was no painter in that country, but if anybody wished to have the portrait
of a friend, of a picture, a beautiful landscape, or of any other object, water was