Lying through Photography

(Bayard, 1840)

We were asked during our lesson to research Hippolyte Bayard’s self-portrait as a drowned man taken in 1840. Bayard was ignored when he found a way to take photographs and in protest, he took this image. In this image, you see what looks like a dead man, or as described at the back of the photograph, the drowned body of Hippolyte Bayard. As the video by the company Vox goes to explain, this image has a lot of metaphors like the way he is dressed, mentioning that he has been left at the morgue and in the photograph, he is surrounded by his belongings.

This image is widely known as the first ‘fake’ image where the artist is lying by using the medium of photography. Even from the very beginning of photography, a photograph was used to tell a lie. If this photograph didn’t have context behind it, which would be the note on the back, we wouldn’t even notice that it’s ‘a lie’. The image alone simply looks like a photographer posing for a photo. I think that the context is what creates the lie.

In conclusion, photography is a medium for lying but not the lie itself because a picture doesn’t lie.

Information Citation:

Marshall, C. (2019). The First Faked Photograph (1840). [online] Open Culture. Available at: http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/the-first-faked-photograph-1840.html [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].

Morrison, J. (n.d.). Self Portrait as a Drowned Man. [online] Thenonist.com. Available at: http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/self_portrait_as_a_drowned_man/ [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].

O’Hearn, M. (2018). Fake news: the drowning of Hippolyte Bayard - Artstor. [online] Artstor. Available at: https://www.artstor.org/2018/09/12/fake-news-the-drowning-of-hippolyte-bayard/ [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].

Vox (2019). The First Faked Photograph. [image] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=374&v=SXe9WCeccOw [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].

Image Citation:

Bayard, H. (1840). Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man. [image] Available at: http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/self_portrait_as_a_drowned_man/ [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].