In 1839, the Académie des Sciences acknowledged a photographic process developed by Louis Daguerre, a set designer. For the first time, it became possible to achieve a direct and precise reproduction of reality. While early attempts were limited to still-lifes, due to the posing time required, the portrait followed quickly. Specialised studios flourished in Paris; that of the Bisson brothers was to welcome a number of celebrities, and it is to them that we owe the only photographic portrait known of Balzac, produced in May 1842. Balzac initially greeted the invention of photography with scepticism. The photograph Nadar relates a discussion on this topic with the author:
‘Therefore, according to Balzac, every body in nature is composed of a series of spectres, in infinitely superimposed layers, foliated into infinitesimal pellicules, in all directions in which the optic perceives this body. Since man is unable to create—that is, to constitute from an apparition, from the impalpable, a solid thing, or to make a thing out of nothing—every Daguerreian operation would catch, detach, and retain, by applying onto itself one of the layers of the photographed body. It follows that for that body, and with every repeated operation, there was an evident loss of one of its spectres, which is to say, of a portion of its constitutive essence.’
Nadar, Quand j’étais photographe, 1899. Translation Eduardo Cadava and Liana Theodoratou)
Curiosity would ultimately have the last word: Balzac twice passed the threshold of the daguerreotyper, and recounted his fascination for this new process to Madame Hanska:
‘Should you wish to have the daguerreotype portrait of your servant, you need only say the word and you shall receive it via post in Petersburg. I have just returned from the daguerreotyper and am stunned by the perfection with which light behaves. You will recall that in 1835, five years before its invention, I published, at the end of Louis Lambert, among his last thoughts, the sentences that describe it? Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire had the same presentiment. What is so admirable is its truth, its precision!’
