Pwt 39 2017 auratic portraits

AURATIC PORTRAITS

Weekly transmission 39-2017 presents:

About Walter Benjamin’s definition of Auratic Portraits Weekly Drawing by Théophile Bouchet: Album de célébrités Le Gray - Carjat - Angerer - Disderi - Fifty Royal Carte de visite Previous transmissions can be found at:

www.plantureux.fr

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Walter Benjamin first speaks of aura in his Little History of Photography (1931), where he tries to explain why it is that, in his eyes, the very earliest portrait photographs — the incunabula of photography — have auras, whereas photographs of a generation later have lost them.

In The Work of Art, the notion of aura is extended rather recklessly from old photographs to works of art in general.

The e-bulletins present articles as well as selections of books, albums, photographs and documents as they have been handed down to the actual owners by their creators and by amateurs from past generations.

The physical descriptions, attributions, origins, and printing dates of books and photographs have been carefully ascertained by collation and through close analysis of comparable works.

The album is for sale, the price is 4000 euros Bitcoins and Paypal transfers are accepted.

N°39-2017. AURATIC PORTRAITS

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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The end of aura, says Benjamin, will be more than compensated for by the emancipatory capacities of the new technologies of reproduction. Cinema will replace auratic art.

Even Benjamin's friends found it hard to get a grip on aura. Brecht, to whom Benjamin expounded the concept during lengthy visits to Brecht's home in Denmark, writes as follows in his diary. — "[Benjamin] says: when you feel someone's gaze alight upon you... you respond (!). The expectation that whatever you look at is looking at you creates the aura... This is the way in which the materialist approach to history is adapted! It is pretty horrifying."

Throughout the 1930s Benjamin struggled to develop an acceptably materialist definition of aura and loss of aura. Film is postauratic, he says, because the camera, being an instrument, cannot see. (A questionable claim: actors respond to the camera as if it is looking at them.)

In a later revision he suggests that the end of aura can be dated to the moment in history when urban crowds grew so dense that people — passers-by — no longer returned one another's gaze. In the Arcades Project he makes the loss of aura part of a wider development: the spread of a disenchanted awareness that uniqueness, including the uniqueness of the traditional artwork, has become a commodity like any other commodity.

The fashion industry, dedicated to the fabrication of unique handiworks intended to be reproduced on a mass scale, points the way here..”. (J.M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books)

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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“The fog surrounding the origins of photography is not quite as dense as that enveloping the beginnings of book-printing. In the case of the former it was perhaps more obvious that the hour of invention had arrived, for it had been apprehended by a number of people: men striving independently towards the same goal, that is, to retain images in the camera obscura which had certainly been known since Leonardo's time, if not before.

About five years after Niepce and Daguerre succeeded in doing this simultaneously, the French state used the legal difficulties encountered by the inventors over patent rights to assume control of the enterprise, thereby making it public by covering its costs.

In this way the conditions were established for a continuously accelerating development which for a long period foreclosed all retrospective appraisal. This is why the historical or, if you like, philosophical questions relating to the rise and fall of photography have remained unattended for decades. And if today [1931] we are becoming conscious of them, there is a precise reason for it. Recent studies start from the striking fact that the flowering of photography - the work of Hill, Cameron, Hugo and Nadar - occurs in its first decade. But this is also the decade which precedes its industrialisation.

Not that this early period was not already full of salesmen and charlatans who had mastered the new technique for the sake of profit; indeed they did so on a mass scale.

But the latter belonged to the fairground and its traditional arts, where photography has always been at home, rather than to industry. Industry conquered the field with the cartede-visite portrait, its first manufacturer characteristically becoming an apparent millionaire.” (Walter Benjamin).

This album can illustrate Benjamin’s concepts of postauratic portraits as they are carte de visite reproductions of royal portraits of the first decade by the great masters, Le Gray, Angerer, Popp, Carjat, Claudet.

The album belonged in the 1860s to a St. Petersbourg resident, probably a French language tutor to the children of an aristocratic russian family, as a number of the fifty carte de visites bear the label of Darzes neveu. Disderi’s signed portrait ofLincoln has no beard yet, so we can date the album precisely of the end 1860 before the American President-Elect grew his whyskers.

Red leather mute binding of the Russian album

Weekly Cartoonby Théophile Bouchet: Album de célébrités

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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FRANCK, after FRANZ-XAVER WINTERHALTER (1806-1873). Louis Philippe in 1839 [1860].

Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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CLAUDET. Reine Marie-AmĂŠlie, Claremont, England, c. 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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[Non credited]. François d’Orléans, Prince de Joinville, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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LEONIDA CALDESI (1822-1891). Louis Philippe Albert d’Orléans, Comte de Paris, 1860.

Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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MAYER BROTHERS. Louis d’Orléans, Prince de Condé, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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ADOLPHE DISDÉRI (1819-1889). Robert d’Orléans, duc de Chartres, Piedmontese dragoon 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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Non crédité. Henri d’Artois, comte de Chambord, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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ADOLPHE DISDÉRI (1819-1889). François d’Orléans, duc de Guise, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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[Non credited]. Henri d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm .

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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MAYER & PIERSON. Sophie de Wurtemberg, Reine des Pays-Bas, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount with “Darzens neveu”, S. Petersbourg printed label. .

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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ADOLPHE DISDÉRI (1819-1889). Guillaume d'Orange-Nassau, Prince d’Orange, 1860.

Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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MAYER & PIERSON. Alexandre d’Orange-Nassau, prince des Pays-Bas, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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LAURENT. Gaston d’Orléans, comte d’Eu, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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MAYER & PIERSON. Roi de Wurtemberg, Reine des Pays-Bas, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount with “Darzens neveu”, S. Petersbourg printed label.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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FRANK. Charles XV, Roi de Suède, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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ANGERER. LĂŠopold, duc de Brabant, futur Roi des Belges, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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MAYER ET PIERSON. Marie Henriette Anne de Habsbourg-Lorraine, duchesse de Brabant, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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GHEMAR FRERES. Philippe de Belgique, Comte de Flandres, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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ADOLPHE DISDÉRI (1819-1889). Louise van Oranje-Nassau, Reine de Suède, 1860.

Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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MAYER ET PIERSON. Charles III, prince de Monaco, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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A. DARZENS. Frédéric-Guillaume, grand-duc de Mecklembourg-Strelitz, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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ETIENNE CARJAT. Nicolas Guillaume de Nassau, prince de Nassau, Bade, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount, Petit & Trinquart, succursale de Bade .

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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GUSTAVE LE GRAY. Danilo Ier, prince de Montenegro , 1858. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount, with Darzens S.Petresbourg printed label .

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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ETIENNE CARJAT. Guillaume de Bade, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount, Petit & Trinquart, succursale de Bade .

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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PIERRE PETIT. Mihail Sturdza, prince de Moldavie, Bade, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount, Petit & Trinquart, succursale Ă Bade .

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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MAISON LE GRAY after CAROL POPP DE SZATHMĂ RY. Alexandre Jean Cuza, Prince Couza de Valachie et Moldavie, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount, with Darzens S. Petresbourg printed label .

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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DESMAISONS. AbdĂźlmecid Ier, Sultan ottoman, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount with A. Giroux wet stamp .

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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GUSTAVE LE GRAY. Mehmed Fuad Pacha, 1858. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount, with “Maison Le Gray Alophe succ.” stamp, verso

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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ADOLPHE DISDÉRI after MATTHEW BRADY. Abraham Lincoln, President Elect of the U.S.A., 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount, signed Disderi in the inter-negativre.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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ANGERER. Anton Ritter von Schmerling, ministre-prÊsident d’Autriche 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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Non crédité. Ferenc Deák, nationaliste hongrois modéré, 1861. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

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Thursday 28 September 2017

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HEINRICH IN TROPPAU (OPAVA). Johann Graf Larisch von Moennich, minisytre autrichien, 1860. Albumen carte de visite, 88x55 mm, on printed mount.

Serge Plantureux - Photographies Cabinet d'expertises et d'investigations 80 rue Taitbout, rez-de-chaussée (Entrée du square d'Orléans) 75009 Paris + 33 140 16 80 80 www.plantureux.fr Number Thirty-Ninth, Third Year, of the Weekly Transmission has been uploaded on Tursday 28 September 2017 at 17:15 (Paris time) Forthcoming upload and transmission on Thursday 5 October 2017, 15:15 The cabinet is open every Thursday 3-7 pm every other moment by appointment