ABSTRACT
It is becoming increasingly accepted that the invention of photography was a long process rather than a single event, and that what Batchen has called ‘the desire to photograph’ (1997) had preceded the public declaration of the launch of the new technology. One moment, however, which has acquired immense importance in this long process is the famous speech delivered by the French physicist, politician and director of the Paris Observatory, François Arago, to the French Chamber of Deputies, on 3 July 1839. 1 The speech was aimed at persuading the Chamber to buy Daguerre’s invention and grant him a pension, and as he was speaking, Arago passed around images of famous Parisian monuments and landmarks such as Notre Dame and Pont Neuf. In a rather orientalising tone, he emphasised strongly the benefits of the new technology in the effort to produce exact facsimiles of monuments, and bring ‘home’ archaeological treasures, or at least their photographic depictions:
Upon examining several of the pictures to be submitted for your inspection all will consider the immense advantages which would have been derived, during the expedition to Egypt for example, as a means of reproduction so exact and so rapid: all will be struck by this reflection that if photography had been known in 1798, we should this day have possessed faithful representations of many valuable antiquities now, through the cupidity of the Arabs, and the vandalism of certain travelers, lost forever to the learned world. To copy the millions and millions of hieroglyphics which entirely cover to the very exterior the great monuments at Thebes, Memphis, Carnac, etc., would require scores of years and legions of artists. With the Daguerréotype, a single man would suffice to bring to a happy conclusion this vast labor (Arago 1889 [1839]: 242–3).
