Eigen DarkSpaceEarly 2001

Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography as a Medium
Author(s): Edward Eigen

Source: Grey Room, No. 3 (Spring, 2001), pp. 90-111
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1262567
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Dark Space and the
Early Days of Photography
as a Medium
EDWARD EIGEN
When one looks into darkness everyone sees in his own way.
-Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic
Underwater photography first appeared on the screen of modern

visual consciousness at the ornate Palace of Optics at the Paris
Universal Exhibition of 1900. Far from being a benign distrac-
tion, this new medium revealed optics itself to be in a state of
suspended animation. A cursory inventory of the Palace's con-
tents-a reading of its architectural cross section, even-
reveals the outline of the situation. Planned as a working
observatory, the Palace housed a colossal refracting telescope
that promised to produce the "largest, brightest, and most dis-
tinct" photographs possible of the celestial vault.' Representing
the leading edge in resolution, the telescope was part of an
international project to catalogue the night sky. Indeed, pho-
tography had become the reason for, and not only the result of,
new advances in optics. What such a claim meant for the
progress of vision, however, is another question. The fact that
photography represented "a different kind of retina than the
human eye" had already been noted by one prominent
astronomer, who reported that certain nebulae visible through
a telescope failed to expose a photographic plate, and others
that made a photographic impression could not be seen by the
eye.2 That this fact was interpreted as an argument against the
"blindness" of animals living in the "pretended darkness"
of the ocean's depths points to an unusual space that had
opened up between vision and visuality.3 What appeared on
the screen at the Palace was the notion of a visual milieu.
Suspended in it were the contents of this unusual space, them-
selves clearly identified with continuously varying states of
density and transparency.4
Naturalist Louis Boutan's photographic projections in the
Palace offered visitors a first glimpse into a foreign, tenebrous
region-the sea. In his book of that yeaf, La Photographie Sous-
Marine et les Progrbs de la Photographie, Boutan compared the
optical void of space to the dense "aqueous milieu" of the sea.5
Whereas the scope of stellar photography was practically
infinite, the sea's rapid absorption of light severely limited
Grey Room 03, Spring 2001, pp. 90-111. @l 2001 Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Mirror of the telescope installed

at Palace of Optics. Universal
Exposition, Paris 1900.
90
its "photographic horizon." Boutan's
attempt to produce "distinct" images in
this milieu reflects less the confidence
derived from the perfection of his pho-
tographic apparatus than a certain anx-
iety concerning the circumstances in
which it operated. Everywhere present
in it was the risk of the fading of any
photographic evidence-aesthetic or
js* I
scientific-into a fatal blur. Yet one
other exhibit at the Palace revealed the
"celestial bodies" that pointillated this
dark space with light.6 Enlivened by an
enzymatic if not an alchemical reaction,
an array of so-called living lamps-
glass globes filled with a photogen-
erative suspension-illuminated the
Palace's vast basement as if by the
"fairest light of the moon."' This display
by physiologist Raphaeil Dubois, who
was the first to explain the mystery of
bioluminescence, also included two
photographs exposed by the lamps, in which the lamps them-
selves figured. The solecism of the images' iconography reveals
them to be evidence from a debate over what Dubois called
"photography of the invisible."8 Like dust gathering on an
untouched surface, an exposure was slowly made by this other
light in conditions of seeming darkness. This was the darkness
that lay beyond the horizon of Boutan's underwater landscapes.
Yet to be seen was whether photography was to be its via media.
The Exposition serves here only as a framing device, a mem-
ory palace for the progress of optics on the eve of its passage
into the "dark continent" of the paraoptical.9 In fact, the pic-
tures at the exhibition-and even the light in which they were
shown-were so many artifacts of an experimental undertak-
Above: Louis Boutan. Underwater ing that has until now been overlooked or simply forgotten.
landscape, 1898. Courtesy
These photographic documents now reside in the archives of
Observatoire Oceanologique,
Laboratoire Arago, Banyuls sur the marine research stations-themselves new visual outposts
Mer, France. in the nineteenth century-where both Boutan and Dubois
Opposite, left: Raphael Dubois.
studied the sea as a vital and visual milieu. The same is true of
Raphael Duboiss "Living lamp:' Louis Fabre-Domergue's portfolio of images La Photographie
1900. Courtesy Institut Michel
Pacha, Station Marine de
des Animaux Aquatiques (1899), a practical essay in how the
Physiologie, La Seyne sur Mer. inhabitants of this milieu were to be artfully composed.
Opposite, right: Rapha4 Dubois.
Notably, the title of Fabre-Domergue's earlier tract, Les
Bust of Claude Bernard illumi- Invisibles (1887), referred to the concrete if minute world of
nated by the light of photobac-
microbes made visible only by the microscope. By analogy, to
teria, 1900. Courtesy Institut
Michel Pacha, Station Marine de make sense of these documents, we must begin by reconstruct-
Physiologie, La Seyne sur Mer. ing the question of what underwater photography sought to
92 Grey Room 03
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make sensible. Like the telescope and the microscope, the

instruments of underwater photography coevolved with mod-
els of observation, inscription, and the quiddity of vision. Also
acting through them was a conceptual apparatus that mutually
disclosed the features of this new visual field and the viewing
subjects specific to it.
The particular effect of underwater photography was not
simply to expose things, but to put into question the medium
in and through which they were exposed. In terms of its instru-
ments, the camera was merely a chamber from which this
medium was temporarily displaced, only to reappear on the
two-dimensional surface of the photograph. Yet no matter how
this chamber was construed, Boutan's and Fabre-Domergue's
own apprehensions about the inherent unreliability of the
medium of underwater photography seeped in. The instru-
mentality thus described is situated mi-lieu between states of
abstraction and absorption, product and process. Thus the
object of underwater photography could not be to produce big-
ger, brighter, and more distinct images. Instead it resides in what
Dubois himself called the experimental "dispositif," referring
to a device of his own making that translated an organism's
reflex response to light into graphic curves.1' (The organism in
question lacked eyes and was itself photogenerative.) In current
usage, the dispositifis a machine or assemblage for "distribut-
ing the visible and the invisible."'11 It nominates the concrete
particularity of a field, the present situation of which shapes an
Eigen I Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 93
A IA
igh
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-- : : ;. : ::i::~i::i:: .,==_ __: . .. .? = ? : : ~: I-?LJ:ii i; i?_Jii . ... :: ..
effect and prescribes an effective strategy.12 With no certain out-

come, and destined to depict what was literally between things,
underwater photography involved means and ends specific
to its medium.
Given the fluorescence in the nineteenth century of aerial,
lunar, Alpine, and other sorts of photography, we may also ask,
Within what discursive space do these photographs operate? In
posing this question with regard to a slightly earlier work,
Timothy O'Sullivan's photograph "Tufa Domes, Pyramid Lake,
Nevada" (1868), Rosalind Krauss has articulated a vision of
nineteenth-century photography poised between "landscape"
and "view." The attributions "landscape," which belongs to the
space of exhibition, and "view," which occupies a place in a
grid of systematic knowledge, imply differing formal charac-
teristics as well as modes of appreciation. Yet neither term ade-
quately addresses the circumstances of underwater photography,
in which the very notion of depth and visual address were
reconsidered theoretically as well as in practice. Boutan and
Fabre-Domergue had to produce through their images a dis-
tinction between the environment as a representational setting
and its factual presence as a milieu.13 This distinction is preg-
nant in the seemingly transparent language Krauss herself uses
to describe the O'Sullivan image: it possesses the "mysterious
beauty to which landscape photography had access during the
early decades of the medium."14 An expansion of what is meant
by "medium," as the material support of the aesthetic object,
allows us to consider it as a cognate term for the (visual) milieu.
The immanence of this milieu is precisely what Krauss recog-
nizes as mysterious-the tufa domes seem "suspended in a
luminous ether." The whole appears as an "undifferentiated
Apparatus for the graphic study ground, in which water and sky connect in an almost seamless
of the photodermatic function
continuity." One can restate Krauss and say that the medium
of the Pholas dactylus. Raphail
Dubois, Legons de Physiologie (photographic) has special access to the medium (visual milieu)
G6ndrale et Comparde (1898). of a particular space and time.
94 Grey Room 03
Before the Aquarium
The striking clarity of Louis Fabre-Domergue's images attests to
the compositional possibilities of underwater photography,
particularly in view of the problems attending the medium.
Fabre-Domergue's goal was to photograph aquatic animals "in a
living state amid their vital milieu."15 To do so entailed turning
this vital milieu into a photographic medium. The introductory
text to La Photographie des Animaux Aquatiques (1899)
explains his efforts through the intermediary of the aquarium
to create a natural point of view for the camera where none
existed in nature. The consequence of this strategy, however,
was that his photographs visually annul the milieu; they rep-
resent a critique of the very naturalism implied by the desire to
depict living nature in situ. This desire itself represents an
important shift in nineteenth-century natural science, from the
anatomy of arrested form to the registration of vital processes.
With it came the realization that the specimen jars and glass
vitrines of the natural history museum were a distorted optic
through which to view living nature. The question then pre-
sented itself: In what space did the naturalist (or the naturalist
as photographer) operate? The actual site of Fabre-Domergue's
studio was the "marine observatory" of Concarneau in Brittany,
the first of its kind in France.16 It was within this space that
Fabre-Domergue effectively reconstructed the visual pyramid
out of so many pieces of glass.
Fabre-Domergue's work marks the first step in the progress
from a photography based in the geometry of point of view to a
true floating-bodies problem. His photographs were not made
underwater, but were images of aquariums that had been
arranged for the purpose of being photographed. For this rea-
son Boutan wrote that while Fabre-Domergue's images were
valuable as illustrations, they could not replace images of ani-
mals taken "at large."" The implication was that there was a
limited reality that an aquarium could contain. In his own defense,
Fabre-Domergue argued that taking a camera into the sea
involved too many variables-including the risk of personal
injury-for it to yield predictable results. So while his project
of photographing living animals amid their natural milieu can
be read as a criticism of the museum, the project can also be
seen as contributing to a natural history museum without walls.18
Like the period room-an invention of nineteenth-century
museology-each image represented a unity of ambience.19
According to Georges Canguilhem, what distinguishes the
milieu concept from terms such as "ambience" and "circum-
stance" is that the latter refer to a certain intuition of a center.
"Milieu" implies a continuous and homogeneous sense of exten-
sion, without definite figure and without privileged position.20
Expanding on Boutan's criticism, we can see how the arresting
D clarity of Fabre-Domergue's images results pre-
cisely from a discontinuity in the visual field:
the camera stood apart from the very milieu in
which its subjects were suspended. It was the
camera that was in fact "at large," its view need-
ing to be cast within the ambience of the aquar-
ium that Fabre-Domergue artfully composed.
C
Fabre-Domergue's methodical conception of
the photographic setup followed along realist
and rationalist lines. In terms of the former,
Fabre-Domergue wrote of "decorating" the
aquarium; his goal was to create "a landscape
appropriate to the mores of each species."21 The
picture-likeness of this landscape (or seascape), composed of
rocks, seaweeds, and gravel arranged "according to the taste of
the operator," suggests the traditionally allied role of observa-
tion and description within the work of the zoologist. This at
a time when photomechanical reproduction was leading to
the standardization of technique, of color, of nomenclature-
indeed the nomenclature of color-in scientific illustration.22
Yet the camera-readiness of the scene equally attests to Fabre-
Domergue's rational scrutiny of each of its elements. He ana-
lyzed the aquarium's geometry, the qualities of each of its
surfaces, and a variety of lighting effects. He learned to do so
from the faults in construction that the camera itself revealed,
including glare from the camera's lights and unworkable angles
of vision. In a new evolution of the Albertian picture window,
the aquarium became a visual passage to an interior space; the
medium it enclosed, however, did not readily transmit a
focused, undistorted image of the subjects suspended in it.
Fabre-Domergue came to understand the photographic dispo-
sition of the aquarium between realism and rationalism, liter-
ally in medias res.
The effective strategy implied by the notion of disposition
can be seen in Fabre-Domergue's singular innovation: the dou-
ble aquarium. The steps leading to it can be seen in the correc-
tions Fabre-Domergue made to the construction of his original
aquarium. Having initially failed to account for the "effect of
perspective" produced by the camera's optics, he was dismayed
when the aquarium's back corners appeared in his photographs,
"depriv[ing] the landscape of its natural aspect." After trying to
mask the corners with landscape elements like weeds or rocks,
he opted instead to counter the effects of perspective by tracing
the camera's point of view onto the aquarium itself. Its rectan-
Double aquarium. Louis Fabre- gular shape was remade into a trapezoid with its short sides
Domergue, La Photographie
opening away from the camera. An imaginary picture plane
des Animaux Aquatiques (1899).
Courtesy Station de Biologie was thus suspended within its fluid confines. The decisive step
Marine de Concarneau. toward the double aquarium's construction, however, was in
96 Grey Room 03
replacing the neutral grey screen that served as the landscape's
"backdrop" with a transparent plane of glass opening into a
supplemental visual milieu.23 It was only through the simulta-
neous partition of and addition to the space of the aquarium
that his subjects finally appeared to be amid their natural
milieu. Fabre-Domergue's subjects were confined to the fore-
ground aquarium, while the second aquarium contained the
element of depth into which the camera's line of sight was
absorbed. As recorded by the camera, the intermediation of the
double aquarium produced the image of a visual continuum.
Curiously, the double aquarium resulted in a form of medium
nonspecificity. Although it allowed Fabre-Domergue to com-
pose his subjects within their natural milieu, it also meant that
the elements of the milieu (in the second aquarium) could be
substituted between each exposure. Whether he was aware of
a possible visual disjunction can only be judged by his comment
that varying the lighting conditions between the two aquariums
raised "questions of the artistic more so than of the scientific
order." However, the issue of composition went beyond the prob-
lems of optics, geometry, and the milieu. It involved the tem-
poral dimension of the pose. The final coordination of the space
of the studio in which the camera was situated and the double
aquarium took place along a visual reflex arc that passed
between the photographer and his subjects. Both were set in
motion by the flash of the camera's lights. What was recorded
in the elapse of each exposure depended vitally on the fluid
duration between each pose. Fabre-Domergue gave his subjects
at least twelve hours to become acclimatized to the aquarium;
he then patiently waited until they formed an appealing
"ensemble."24 (For this purpose he advised photographers to
seat themselves comfortably beside their camera but not to fall
into a state of inattention.) When the moment arrived, Fabre-
Domergue had to operate the shutter and the flash in perfect
synchrony so that the former was closed before the animals had
a chance to respond to the latter. If his own hand-to-eye reflexes
were off, the camera registered the flow of time (the movement
of the animal through the milieu and its resulting turbulence)
as a "blur." Ultimately, the sharpness of the image depended
on the "composure" [sangfroid] of the photographer as his
optical impulses were fed into the camera and filtered through
the medium.
Casting a rapid glance at the images Fabre-Domergue com-

posed in this manner, suffice it to note the stillness and silence
of his living subjects. Their vital spontaneity, which was poten-
tially disruptive to the rational construction of the scene, was
instead made into an arresting pose. (One image in particular,
an odalisque-like lobster, even suggests the presence of some
visual whimsy.) The double aquarium was something more
Eigen Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 97
2-5:
wx wit
q- fa
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:-:.... .... ..
rl, ,*
ic-N-
98 Grey Room 03
than a realistic setting for his subjects. Fabre-Domergue set the
scene for a transactional view of photography. The milieu was
not merely a material support for the subjects-the element of
suspension-but a medium of exchange. By introducing sepa-
rations within this medium-ultimately by prioritizing the
camera's point of view-what was most unnatural about the
double aquarium was made to seem only natural. In light of
this observation, the question of composition finally gives
way to the reality of the photographic disposition. Fabre-
Domergue's own presence in the scene is not a visible one; he
is at the origin of the reflex that coordinates the elements of his
visual construction. But for the very reason Fabre-Domergue
identified-the world of unforeseeable circumstances-Boutan's
photography, to which we shall now turn, did not allow of
such separations.
Off the Map and in the Sea

The two parts of Boutan's La Photographie Sous-Marine et les
Progres de la Photographie (1900), despite the conjunction cre-
ated by its title, exposed a rift-a murky space-between the
fate of underwater photography and that of photography itself.
The first, "theoretical" section of the book recapitulated, from
a scientific point of view, the progress of photography from its
origins. Boutan placed special emphasis on the perfection
around 1870 of rapid emulsions, which greatly expanded the
range of photography's use, from criminology-the study of the
milieu-to topographic survey. By contrast, the second section
of the book concerned the "details," the irreducible particular-
ity of the "milieu in which [Boutan] operated."25 These details
might include notations of the date and time of day when indi-
vidual photographs were made, as if they were so many cloud
studies.26 The details also include minutely labeled drawings
of the cameras Boutan designed to contend with these chang-
ing conditions.27 Arguably the most revealing detail, however,
was the map of the Bay of Banyuls on the Mediterranean Sea
that appears at the head of the section. Not only does it indicate
the setting for Boutan's work, it suggests the transit of photog-
raphy to a space that did not figure on the map. Photography
had entered the "smooth space" of the sea in which, as Boutan's
own experiences proved, sound waves were more effective
even than sight as a means of location. If in theory was to be
found photography's claim to scientific objectivity, borne in the
Top: Louis Fabre-Domergue.
details was the necessity to consider photography alongside the Labrus bergylta, c. 1899.
"anexact" sciences.28 Wittingly or not, in Boutan's hands pho- Courtesy Station de Biologie
Marine de Concarneau.
tography became an index of the "qualitative multiplicities"
everywhere present in the medium in which he worked.29 Bottom: Louis Fabre-Domergue.
Homarus vulgaris c. 1899.
Visual turbulence was caused by Boutan's own immersion Courtesy Station de Biologie
into the milieu. Indeed, the details of Boutan's diving expeditions Marine de Concarneau.
can be read as a phenomenological
precondition of his photography.
For unlike the orderly disposition
. i i ? i ::: !!! !!ii:i:i~ of things in Fabre-Domergue's stu-
dio, the photographic field appeared
i-'i: ..........~ :.s. :e.'.... : i~.i i: ii:i~ii i ? !::: :i to Boutan only after filtering through
the onrush of visual as well as
: --,:i .. .. : iiiiii:i :l:.. : / ::ii:!i;!ii iiii!i : : : i
corporeal and mental sensations
!!i~iiii~iii~ i~!i::!i~,: i :iiii...... . : ii : -::
that accompanied his immersion
!i!ii "'ii-',ii55 ?:,r:i~ ii :;:ii?~ :ii :- Arguably, this accounts for the nar-
rative structure of Boutan's book,
which poses perceptual problem
in terms of his subjective experience
of them. As will be seen, the plot lit
erally thickens as he descends to
greater depths; in these regions th
camera was operated automatically
and as a result any notion (narrative
or descriptive) of point of view wa
dispersed. The narrative-and th
images for which it serves as an elab
orate caption-gives shape to a serie
of troubling questions: Where, or
under what conditions, is light lost,
and with it vision? Was human vision all there was to be found
in this dark space? But well before the import of these ques-
tions was felt, the experience of the sea posed issues of physical
and visual access. The "artificial atmosphere" of Boutan's div-
ing suit not only was a means of life support, but extended the
boundaries and presence of the body. It was only by "abstract-
ing" himself from its constricting envelope that Boutan became
aware of the very element the suit was meant to exclude. Only
gradually was Boutan's immersion complete-a melding of
inner and outer experience-and he reports losing himself to
his surroundings; only a tug on his life-support line "brought
[him] back to the exterior world."30
In abstracting himself, Boutan came to see the "diversity and
beauty of the underwater landscape."31 Apparently, abstraction
was not-as it was soon to be codified in the modernist idiom-
a means of revealing the constitutive materiality of a medium,
but rather a means of exposing the unpredictable potential in
the midst of things.32 Here again the evidence of narrative detail
reveals a critical complication: the actual unsettling of things
brought about by Boutan's presence was contrary to his visual
sensibility; at times it also made photography nearly impossi-
ble. Even after he immobilized the camera, his own movements
"troubled the ambient milieu.""3 Each step in his lead boots
stirred up a "cloud of silt" that obscured the available light. He
100 Grey Room 03
: _ii ::?!i: ::i :: I i i i i ) i i i i i
:iii!!!i ii: ~ ..: iiiii::?l :i':. ... . .
was finally made to despair that the "landscape itself was in

movement.""3 Further complicating matters was that the situa-
tion could not be directly perceived by Boutan. To wit, Boutan
reports that the very effort required to maneuver his camera
caused him to perspire, the moisture condensing on the win-
dow of his helmet. His efforts to wipe the window clear with
his tongue and the tip of his nose proved unsuccessful. As a
result, the landscape appeared to him "as if through a thick
fog," which in fact corresponded to the visual conditions on the
other side of the helmet's window.35 To be sure, Boutan devised
less strenuous means of moving his camera and found patches
of stable seabed on which to work. Yet this partly amusing and
partly pathetic anecdote reveals the misfortune of Boutan's
criterion for a good photograph: that it be, in classic Cartesian
terms, clear, focused, and distinct. The sea was the opposite of
the uniform extensio in which the conditions were everywhere
the same for things to come distinctly into view.
The tension inherent in the desire to make distinct pho-
tographs amid conditions that would seem to dictate an oppo-
site approach reveals itself in Boutan's rhetoric of landscape.
The very notion of the underwater world as a landscape is a
productive misnomer.36 His projection of the conventions of
the picturesque into this "landscape in movement" made this
setting easier to visualize. In fact, it was Boutan's regret over his
Opposite: Louis Boutan.
Legs of the team, 1898. Courtesy
inability to fully describe or bring back visual "souvenirs" from
Observatoire Oceanologique,
his submarine explorations that made him turn to photogra-
Laboratoire Arago, Banyuls sur
phy.37 The consolation he found in photography could only Mer, France
have been diminished by the difficulty of producing distinct

Above: Louis Boutan.
images. On the "theoretical" side, he experimented with newFish in front of a white screen
submerged several meters,
techniques and even constructed a test bed in the laboratory's
1898. Courtesy Observatoire
dry-dock to set the focus of his camera precisely. But it was his
Oceanologique, Laboratoire
landscape sensibility that offers an insight into the degreeArago,
to Banyuls sur Mer, France.
which his photographs were ultimately medium
specific. Boutan writes of one of his underwater
promenades, "Nothing is as picturesque as fol-
lowing one of the paths traced by the current."
The path he describes was in fact a fluid passage
through a liquid mass. The visual milieu is a
continuous element even if it contains other con-
tinuities; it is not what holds things together,
but what flows through them. The path was not
defined by fixed outlines, but by relative densi-
ties of substance and of light. Instead of drawing
distinctions, so to speak, underwater photography allowed figure
and ground, subject and object, to float.
It is revealing, then, to ask what is being communicated by
Boutan in the remarkable series of images in which underwa-
ter photography literally announced itself as a medium. Was it
the clarity of theory or the nuance of the details? In each of
these photographs appears a small screen upon which the
words "Photographie Sous-Marine" appear, like the subtitles
in a silent movie. In one image Boutan used bait to lure fish in
front of this "background," creating a vivid silhouette.38 Even
here, however, the silvery presence of the fish is fleeting. In
another image, sand has drifted onto the screen's white surface,
where it is legible as a trace of the water's movement. The very
legibility of the screen can be read as an answer to the question
to which the book's narrative crescendos: "Is the milieu of
water improper for obtaining good photographs?" 39No, t
screen advertises, making its appearance through the ve
medium of underwater photography. But it also acts as a su
face upon which the viewer constructs his or her own readi
or viewing.
The presence of someone-either in front of or behind the
camera-to guide that reading is the final significant figural
inclusion in these scenes. Several of the images include a diver
holding the "Photographie Sous-Marine" screen up to the cam-
era. Given Boutan's efforts to erase the photographer's (disrup-
tive) presence, why does he now repeople the scene? The
answer can be found in a drawing, one in a series of such dia-
Above: Figure intended to show grams throughout the book, with the didactic caption: "Figure
how the photograph representing intended to demonstrate how the photograph representing a
a diver was taken. Louis Boutan,
diver was taken." The drawing's unreal cross-sectional view
La Photographie Sous-Marine et
les Progrts de la Photographie
through the water's surface shows the location of the diver, the
(1900). camera, and a boat from which the camera was remotely oper-
Opposite: Louis Boutan. ated. Evidently there was no one behind the camera, explain-
Portrait of a diver (taken at 11 am ing the necessity to establish its focal distance in advance. The
September 22,1898, a cloudless
day). Courtesy Observatoire
title of the photograph to which the drawing corresponds,
Oc6anologique, Laboratoire "Instantaneous Portrait of a Diver," further suggests that faster
Arago, Banyuls sur Mer, France. shutter speeds made it possible to displace time (as a milieu)
102 Grey Room 03
;: ?-: ::i:i : ?::
from the image. According to Boutan,

however, what made the image remark- f ::-:::::i
able was not its sharpness, but the fact

that the automatic shutter meant that :i: _: : _ i:
the photographer was "no longer obliged

to enter the water."40 (His absence is
inadvertently revealed by the fact that
the diver is holding the screen upside
down.) The appearance of the diver in
the scene marks a subjective reversal
in Boutan's project. The diver becomes
an object for the camera as opposed to
its operator. With this distancing, the
camera comes untethered from the fate
of human vision. The image was a part-
ing gesture. Photography-formerly
the eye's double-was about to enter
regions where the photographer could
not follow. Literally mise en abime,
vision would undergo a sea change.
Dark Space
If photography was to expose anything
new in the visual field, it had to become
a vehicle for experiencing dark space. Light space, according to
EugBne Minkowski, acts as a backdrop for objects that may be
perceived in their individuality. It is the condition for deter-
mining the relationship between things but is itself effaced by
their materiality.41 By contrast, in dark space everything is
obscure and mysterious. "One feels as if in the presence of the
unknown, in its positive value, and the phenomenon of 'mys-
tery' seems the best and the most immediate way to express this
characteristic of lived obscurity."42 The subject, too, is perme-
able to darkness in a way that it is not to light space. For Boutan
the sea represented the possibility of loss: of light, of vision,
and even of consciousness. Even if his experience of dark space
was mediated by photography, the threat was present that the
subject of vision would succumb to the lure and dissolution
of dark space. Tellingly, as the narrative of Boutan's book pro-
gressed into the depths and to a more profound understanding
of vision, the question of water's transparency resurfaced.
Beyond the physical limits it placed on the photographic hori-
zon, the question of transparency was evidently charged with
emotional content. In the research to which it led, the milieu
finally threatened to displace human vision from its wonted
perch at the center of things.
In chapters with alternately cautionary and reassuring
titles, "The Limits One Can Seek to Attain in Underwater
Photography," followed by "Absolute Darkness Does Not Reign
Everywhere at the Bottom of the Sea," Boutan considered the
results of what was arguably the first natural history of a visual
milieu. He was referring to an experimental program initiated
in 1883 to study the penetration of light into water, in addition
to "all the natural phenomena for which [water] is the the-
ater."43 In fact, the program was initiated by the discovery in
Lake Geneva of an animal-matte white in color and lacking
eyes; its skin felt light-that naturalists hypothesized had
undergone an evolutionary modification consistent with life in
an "absolutely dark milieu."44 Testing this hypothesis meant
using photometric devices to determine the transparency of
water itself. The readings of photographic plates were trans-
lated into an exhaustive tabulation of light at specific depths,
taking into account temperature, salinity, and season of the
year. Yet the confident empiricism with which regions of visi-
bility and invisibility were plotted was undermined by the
recognition that photographic plates were selective in what
they registered. Was it the case, it was asked, that when the
plates failed to register light, vision ceased to be possible? To
the contrary, photography itself helped demonstrate how tenu-
ous was the analogy of vision and photography. For his part,
Boutan made a case for vision in the deep through the power of
images. He photographed a group of fish, caught in depths far
beyond where light was presumed to penetrate, against a white
canvas, the better to illustrate their black, oily eyes. Unwilling
to accept that the latter were "simple ornaments," he argued
that the fish were capable of vision.45
The final determination of this issue, however, involved a
more unusual form of reasoning. If photometry established the
intensity of light, the question of vision turned on the question
of what types of light remained in the darkness. It was not in
light space (in which oily eyes were silhouetted against a white
ground), but in dark space (literally the darkroom in which
photographs were produced) where vision would ultimately be
tested.46 The reasoning goes back to the observation made by
astronomers that sometimes what could be seen by the eye did
not register on the photographic plate. In interpreting this
observation, physiologist Georges Pouchet noted that the red
light used in darkrooms, though clearly visible to those who
worked by it, had no effect on the plates themselves.47
Evidently the darkroom was not entirely dark; by analogy, he
argued, nor were the depths of the sea. It was precisely red
light, which failed to impress the photographic retina, that was
seen by animals living in "so-called obscurity." Pouchet
believed that vision existed in any "transparent milieu." As
for the "blind" specimens that instigated these investigations,
Pouchet explained that their true habitat was holes dug into the
104 Grey Room 03
lake bed; they lived in an opaque visual and vital milieu. The
presence of red light, however, also made him doubt the view
held by Dubois, among others, that in the abyss "living light"
played the role of the "celestial bodies" guiding the way for
other species.48
In one of his so-called books of natural history, La Mer (1861),
Jules Michelet had earlier written of these other sources of light.
Plunging into the sea, he wrote, daylight is soon lost, and one
enters a twilight where the only remaining color is a "sinister
red." Its glow, too, soon disappears, and absolute darkness
prevails, except for the intermittent presence of a "frightening
phosphorescence."49 This layering of shades of darkness, to
each of which belonged different organs of vision, suggested
that the sea represented a multiplicity of vital and visual
milieus.50 Yet what did this mean for the fate of underwater
photography? The photographic plates used in these photo-
metric surveys were no different than those in Boutan's camera.
And exactly at the point where the former predicted the pres-
ence of other kinds of vision, the latter failed to operate. To be
sure, Boutan had recourse to electric lights to transform this
mysterious dark space into his photographic studio. The result
was not what he expected, however. Limited to the ambit of its
own light, the camera no longer surveyed a field of vision but
was trained on an optical milieu to which it would finally
become assimilated. This assimilation would be realized by
stages as Boutan perfected apparatuses capable of functioning
in ever more remote regions, at ever greater depths.
It was also through the use of electric lights that Boutan real-
ized some of the formal desires that were contradicted by the
medium in which he worked. Boutan wrote enthusiastically of
a shallow water site off the coast covered in alluring corals: "I
could not dream of a more pleasing photographic studio." But
circumstances intervened; just as he was to take a photograph,
the sky became cloudy, and the underwater landscape dark-
ened. The coral that a moment earlier "projected distinctly
against the sand," suddenly "blurred into the night."51 Returning
to the scene some time later, this time armed with electric
lights, he realized an arresting image of these odd beings made
opalescent by the lamps' glow. But if such images are to be
understood as the product of the studio, the actual conditions
in which Boutan worked warrant notice. He writes,
Our small boat, while only a short distance from the

shore, seemed to be lost in the middle [au milieu] of the
immensity of that calm and black water, and it was only
with difficulty that one could distinguish in the distance
points of light which would indicate the location of the
small village of Banyuls.52
This passage does more than give a sense of atmosphere.
Boutan's crew was far less "preoccupied" than he with the
"poetry of the nocturnal scene." (It was their task to lower the
heavy camera and electric lights into the sea and to haul them
back to the surface.) The description marks out an experience
of optical distance particular to being at sea. Losing sight of the
points of light along shore equally meant losing all sense of ori-
entation; their boat was adrift in the middle of a featureless-
calm and black-immensity. They were adrift on a sea of
optical subjectivity.
Boutan and his crew faced similar quandaries of orientation
in setting the camera to work. There was no way to know what,
if anything, the camera was pointed at "in the middle [au
milieu] of the darkness." That is until they turned on the elec-
tric lights, when a shocking reversal took place. With the sea's
bottom illuminated, "all the objects situated in the camera's
field appeared even more distinctly than in daylight."53 The sun
is dead; long live the sun. Boutan's dispositif made the sea dis-
tinct for the first time; with the focused rays of electric light, it
was ready to be photographed. Notably, the scene produced a
visual echo. A number of villagers who witnessed the flash of
light from shore called out for an explanation. The lights dis-
turbed the continuous expanse of the sea's darkness; as seen
from shore, the flash marked the location of the camera. A light
space had instantaneously been formed within it. Correspond-
ingly, the points of lights along shore to which the crew anx-
iously looked were themselves encompassed by darkness.
If the skein of lines of sight from the boat to the shore and
from the shore to the singular light emerging from the sea made
it possible to situate the scene of the photograph, any notion
of orientation was lost when Boutan sent his camera into the
inner recesses of dark space. Working at a depth of fifty meters,
the camera no longer rested on the seabed but was suspended
from the ship. As there was no effective means of anchoring the
ship, the camera was free to drift. The camera and its lights
were placed on a chassis that was operated approximately in
the watery masses. And since there was no way of knowing
what the camera would encounter, Boutan guaranteed some
image by affixing a screen, inscribed "Photographie Sous
Marine A 50 Metres," at a short distance from the camera. In
fact, the screen was all that could be seen by the camera. It was
as if to say, any image produced at this depth was positive proof
of the possibility of photography at such a depth. For Boutan
still wondered whether there was a layer where water ceased to
be transparent. It was, as he imagined, a layer milky white,
thick with decomposing matter held in suspension. But the evi-
dence of a single photograph indicated that at fifty meters the
electric lights could still penetrate the milieu, and the darkness
106 Grey Room 03
folded into it. The screen ceases to
be an object figuring distinctly in
space. It no longer appears as an 1
impermeable surface against which

|E
objects may be silhouetted, but A L ....?
rather as a scrim onto which the
presence of the camera has been
projected and through which por-
tions of the light have likely passed.
With this image, for the first time
Boutan expresses what seems to be
a formal objection. He anticipates that the picture could be
reproached because it lacked the visual interest of those taken
on the sea bottom; missing were the florid objects or the elements
of landscape. Instead, the image was produced "in the middle
of the water" [entre deux eaux],54 plainly recording the details of
the camera's immersion. Suspended between the surface and the
bottom of the sea, the camera captured the most disturbing scene
of all: what it looked like to be in the middle of the darkness.
Boutan even imagined a camera that would correspond to this
visual condition. Its design would allow him to explore even
greater depths in which the atmospheric pressure threatened
to crush a conventional camera's "darkroom"--the watertight
space between the lens and the plate. The camera would thus
undergo an evolutionary modification (analogous to that of the
"blind" species) consistent with its visual milieu. There would
be no inside or outside to the camera; it would be plunged
"directly into the water, and the water would have direct access
to it."55 By eliminating the very structure of the camera, the pho-
tographic apparatus became continuous with its milieu. Thus
would dark space replace the camera obscura as the model for
underwater photography. The specificity of the medium is
revealed entre deux eaux; amid these conditions of visual con-
tinuity, the desire for distinction itself would finally be absorbed.
Conclusion
Dark space should not simply be understood here in terms of
physical obscurity. Rather it relates to a pathology of orienta-
tion, which finally ends in the loss of all distinction between
the self and its milieu.56 The whole matter of underwater pho-
tography entailed the process of adaptation to this space of
audible shadows. Appropriately enough, the type of camera
Boutan originally employed was called a "detective." The theory--
the very term comes from the verb "to see"-of photography was Photographic apparatus w
not enough to establish its adequacy to these circumstances. The lamps and screen designed
photography in the depths
camera picked up evidence (the details) that anything could Louis
in Boutan, La Photogra
fact be figured from the visual milieu. Yet underwater photog- Sous-Marine et les Progrs
raphy was hardly an arid interrogation of the details; it was la
an Photographie (1900).
Eigen Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 107
experimental medium. Returning to where we began: Boutan
only agreed to exhibit his photographs at the Palace of Optics
in exchange for support in constructing his electric lights. His
participation in this grand spectacle underwrote his attempt to
perfect underwater photography's dispositif. The Palace's base-
ment presented a more muted though no less curious vision.
Dubois wrote that in order to see his display of living light, vis-
itors first had to let their eyes adjust from daylight conditions.
His experimental apparatus had demonstrated graphically that
living light was as soon felt as seen. It was Dubois who, the fol-
lowing year, used photography to experiment on the viscosity of
vision itself. He exposed two photographs to compare the quality
of light filtered through glass tubes filled either with water or
with the aqueous humor drained from an eye.57 His purpose was
to dispel the notion that the latter was somehow phosphores-
cent. But like the experiment of underwater photography, what
the images demonstrated is that vision was always vision in a
specific milieu. However we figure it, we see through water.
108 Grey Room 03
Notes
Earlier versions of this essay, which is drawn from material used in my doc-
toral dissertation, "Between Stations and Habitations: The Architecture of
French Science at the Shore, 1830-1900," were delivered as papers at the
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (1998),
and the Dixiemes Entretiens du Centre Jacques Cartier, l'Architecture, les
Sciences, et la Culture de l'Histoire au XIXe Sibcle (1997). All translations
are by the author.
1. L. N. Vandevyver, "La Grande Lunette de 1900," Ciel et Terre 11 (August

1898): 258.
2. Max Wolf, "Sur la Comparaison des Resultats de l'Observation Astrono-
mique Directe avec ceux de l'Inscription Photographique," Comptes Rendus
des Seances de l'Academie des Sciences 102 (March 1, 1886): 477.
3. Georges Pouchet, "Sur les Photographies Stellaires et les Animaux
Aveugles des Eaux Profondes," Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Seances
de la Soci6t6 de Biologie 3, no. 10 (March 19, 1886): 122-24. In the preface to
the edited volume Vision and Visuality (Seattle: Bay Press, 1988), Hal Foster
describes its project "to thicken modern vision." Most notably this has included
Jonathan Crary's corporealization of vision; see his Techniques of the Observer:
On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1990).
4. See Hubert Damisch's notion of reprdsentation suspendue, meaning either
"suspended representation" or "performance postponed," in The Origin of
Perspective, trans. John Goodman (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994).
5. Louis Boutan, La Photographie Sous-Marine et les Progres de la
Photographie (Paris: Schleicher Frbres, 1900), 292.
6. Armand de Quatrefages, "Memoire sur la Phosphorescence de Quelques
Invertebres Marins," Annales des Sciences Naturelles ser. 3, 14 (1850): 264.
Quatrefages notes that since antiquity, navigators have tried to assimilate the
mysterious light that appeared on the surface of the water with diverse atmos-
pheric phenomena, giving it the name "sea meteors."
7. Raphael Dubois, La Vie et la Lumibre (Paris: Librairie FMlix Alcan,
1914), 119.
8. Raphail Dubois, "La Photographie de l'Invisible," Comptes Rendus
Hebdomadaires des Seances de la Socidte de Biologie 53 (March 9, 1901):
263, contributed to a debate with physicist Gustave Le Bon over the existence
of La Phosphoresence Invisible or "black light."
9. Dubois, La Vie et la Lumibre, 16.
10. Dubois, La Vie et la Lumibre, 258.
11. Gilles Deleuze, "What is a dispositif?" in Michel Foucault, Philosopher,
ed. Timothy Armstrong (New York: Routledge, 1992), 160.
12. Francois Jullien, The Propensity of Things: Toward a History ofEfficacy
in China, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1995). James Corner takes
up this usage in "Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes," in Recovering
Landscape, ed. James Corner (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
1999), 160.
13. Augustin Berque, Mediance: De Milieux en Paysages (Montpellier-Paris:
Reclus-Documentation Francoise, 1990).
14. Rosalind Krauss, "Photography's Discursive Spaces," in The Originality
of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985),
131. For Krauss's more recent theorization of the "medium," see "A Voyage on
the North Sea ": Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition (London: Thames
& Hudson, 1999).
Eigen 1 Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 109
15. Louis Fabre-Domergue, La Photographie des Animaux Aquatiques
(Paris: Georges Carr6 et C. Naud, 1899), 1.
16. Jean-Jacques Coste, De l'Observation et de l'Experience en Physiologie
(Paris: Victor Masson, 1869).
17. Louis Boutan, "L'Instantan6 dans la Photographie Sous-Marine,"
Archives de Zoologie Exp6rimentale et Generale 16 (1898): 305.
18. This potential is made clear in the influential "Rapport sur un Ouvrage
Inedit Intitul6: Photographie zoologique, par MM. Rousseau et Dev6ria,"
Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des S6ances de l'Acad6mie des Sciences 36
(1853): 993: "[U]ne image photographique bien faite donne, non-seulement ce
que l'auteur a lui-meme vu et voulu representer, mais tout ce qui est reelement
visible dans l'objet ainsi reproduit. Un autre naturaliste pourra donc y saisir
des faits que le premier n'aura pas aperrus, et faire reellement des decouvertes
a l'aide de l'image, comme il en aurait fait en observant l'objet en nature."
19. See Francis Haskell, History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation
of the Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
20. Georges Canguilhem, "Le Vivant et Son Milieu," in La Connaissance
de la Vie (Paris: Vrin, 1992), 134.
21. Fabre-Domergue, La Photographie des Animaux Aquatiques, 2.
22. Ann Shelby Blum, Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century
Zoological Illustration (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 345.
23. Louis Fabre-Domergue, "Photographies d'Aquarium," Photo-Gazette
(1898), quoted in Boutan, "L'Instantan6 dans la Photographie Sous-Marine," 303.
24. Fabre-Domergue, La Photographie des Animaux Aquatiques, 2.
25. Boutan, La Photographie Sous-Marine, v.
26. On the visual study of the atmosphere and a painterly conception of
continuity, see Hubert Damisch, Th6orie du /Nuage/, Pour une Histoire de la
Peinture (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1972).
27. The drawings were produced by Boutan's brother, a graduate of the Ecole
Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, where a so-called graphic language of
industry was taught to illustrate mechanisms for the purposes of manufacture.
28. Gilles Deleuze and FMlix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1988), 382. Boutan reports hearing the sound wave from a detonation set
off miles away to clear a harbor. In the sea, sound was to become the means
for establishing coordinates (echolocation) and producing images (sonar).
29. On the notion of the approximative "anexact" sciences that describe
movements and flows, see Michel Serres, La Naissance de la Physique dans
les Texte du Lucrece: Fleuves et Turbulences (Paris: Minuit, 1977). On Bergson's
notion of "qualitative multiplicities," see Edward Casey, The Fate of Place:
A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 303.
30. Boutan, La Photographie Sous-Marine, 156.
31. Louis Boutan, "Memoire sur la Photographie Sous-Marine," Archives
de Zoologie Experimentale et Gen6rale, ser. 3, 1 (1893): 283.
32. John Rajchman, "Folding," in Constructions (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1998), 76.
36. On the emergence of a notion of "seascape," see my "Where Landscape
Ends, the Sea Begins: Understanding Seascape," in Landscape and Art:
I Coldquio Internacional de Hist6ria da Arte (Sao Paulo: CIHA/CBHA, 2000),
111-20.
37. Boutan, "M6moire sur la Photographie Sous-Marine," 283.
110 Grey Room 03
38. Boutan, "L'Instantan6 dans la Photographie Sous-Marine," 324-25.
39. Boutan, "L'Instantan6 dans la Photographie Sous-Marine," 301.
41. Eugene Minkowski, Lived Time, trans. Nancy Metzel (1933; reprint,
Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 428.
42. Minkowski, Lived Time, 429.
43. Hermann Fol and 1Edouard Sarasin, "P6n6tration de la Lumibre du Jour
dans les Eaux du Lac de Genbve et dans Celles de la M6diterran6e," M6moires
de la Soci6t6 de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle de Genbve 29 (1887): 3.
44. Frangois Forel, "Recherches Photographiques sur la Transparence de
l'Eau," Bulletin de la Socidtd Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles, ser. 2, 13
(June 1874): 24.
46. Paul Regnard, La Vie dans les Eaux (Paris: G. Masson, 1891), 197,
writes that these regions are of an "obscurity comparable to that of the black-
est darkrooms."
47. In a chapter of La Vie et la Lumibre entitled "The Influence of Light on

Ideation and Work," Dubois reports Lumibre's own observations that, after
working all day in the darkroom's red light, his factory workers exhibited out-
rageous behavior. The light was eventually changed to a shade of green with
a felicitous effect on the workers (p. 273).
48. Georges Pouchet, "Sur les Conditions de la Vie dans les Grands Fonds,"
in Compte Rendus des Seances du Congres International de Zoologie, Paris
1889 (Paris: Soci6t6 de Zoologie, 1890), 130. Pouchet compared the ability of
animals to detect this light to that of dogs to pick up a scent trail impercepti-
ble to humans.
49. Jules Michelet, La Mer (1861; reprint, Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 43-44.
50. Canguilhem, Le Vivant et Son Milieu, 147.
56. Roger Caillois quoted in Anthony Vidler, "Dark Space," in The
Architectural Uncanny (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 175. Vidler's article
examines the cultural significance of Minkowski's book.
57. Rapha6l Dubois, "Sur la Pr6tendue Flourescence du Corps Vitr6,"
Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des S6ances de la Socidt6 de Biologie 53
(February 16, 1901): 181. The eye was a bovine specimen.

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Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography as a Medium

Author(s): Edward Eigen

Underwater photography first appeared on the screen of modern

-;":*r 'slql 1"

: ::.;:-~-:: :--:?::::: ;: -::-::: : -;: --:: --: -: - --::':--:-:-i~--:

Mirror of the telescope installed

?_- ::~i~i-~iii:?i:*a,~;: i::::: ~ :_

make sensible. Like the telescope and the microscope, the

Eigen I Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 93

effect and prescribes an effective strategy.12 With no certain out-

Eigen I Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 95

Casting a rapid glance at the images Fabre-Domergue com-

Eigen Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 97

" Arf,:::r: :::

Off the Map and in the Sea

Eigen I Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 99

100 Grey Room 03

:iii!!!i ii: ~ ..: iiiii::?l :i':. ... . .

was finally made to despair that the "landscape itself was in

have been diminished by the difficulty of producing distinct

Eigen I Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 101

102 Grey Room 03

from the image. According to Boutan,

able was not its sharpness, but the fact

the photographer was "no longer obliged

Eigen I Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 103

104 Grey Room 03

Our small boat, while only a short distance from the

Eigen I Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 105

106 Grey Room 03

impermeable surface against which

Eigen Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 107

108 Grey Room 03

1. L. N. Vandevyver, "La Grande Lunette de 1900," Ciel et Terre 11 (August

Eigen 1 Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 109

37. Boutan, "M6moire sur la Photographie Sous-Marine," 283.

110 Grey Room 03

47. In a chapter of La Vie et la Lumibre entitled "The Influence of Light on

Eigen I Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography 111

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