ABSTRACT
A remarkable daguerreotype by the French photographer Marie Charles Isidore Choiselat, The Pavillon de Flore and the Garden of the Tuilleries, was exposed in September 1849, presenting the reader with scene in Paris that boasts a dramatically moody sky. The doctoring of photographs is also demonstrated, to less elevating effect, by French photographer named Leon Cremiere in his albumen print titled Pilote, Chien de Saintonge, now in collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. The composition shows two students, one facing a potential life of sin and the other a life of chastity and good works. In seeking to represent ideal and the imaginary through combination printing achieved in the darkroom, through trickery if the people like, Robinson-it seemed to some other photographers-had lost touch with ultimate touchstone of aesthetic judgment: nature. No wonder, then, that the negative is so often seen as photography’s most dangerous element, the element to be feared, controlled, and, if possible, suppressed.
