The Paradox of Photography by Pierre Taminiaux

intersection of law and literary studies constitutes one of the most popular areas of literary studies “là-bas” (in the United States) and concludes with a lovely sentence in which moralists appropriate the silence “nécessaire à la résonance des substantifs, qui ayant absorbé les récits du monde, s’érigent en bornes de l’action des hommes” (123). Imagine the effect of adjectives! Laurent Versini describes how the narrator recounts and employs repetition, allegory, metaphor and fantasy to provide both morality and mythology. Jean-Noël Pascal briefly demonstrates how eighteenth-century fable writers either critique or copy La Fontaine, offering examples of political or social messages. Some essays include bibliographies and notes. Some respond to others. All provoke thought and perhaps, in the end, this work is less about “l’idée et ses fables,” than “les fables et les idées” that they provoke. Carleton University (ON) (Canada) Roseann Runte TAMINIAUX, PIERRE. The Paradox of Photography. New York: Rodopi, 2009. ISBN 97890 -420-2666-7. Pp. 206. $62.00. This essay is divided into four chapters entitled: No Art’s Land, Reasonable Madness, The Image, One Image, Images, and The Fascinated Eye. Taminiaux raises very important questions regarding the definition of photography, as well as its status, or lack thereof, as an art form. To do this, Taminiaux looks at the differences between painting and photography as they are described in the works of four famous French intellectuals: Baudelaire, Breton, Barthes, and Valéry. In his first chapter, he focuses primarily on Baudelaire’s work on photography entitled Le Public moderne et la photographie. For Baudelaire, photography is not an art because it lacks its own distinct history; painting has a supremacy over photography. According to Taminiaux, the nineteenth century was a period full of contradictions due not only to the development of new techniques and scientific research, but also to the nostalgic perspective from which many Romantic artists viewed the past. Baudelaire criticizes the industrial nature of photography, and dismisses its artistic potential because it “is confined to the need of practical realities” (53). In general, Romantic writers and painters, particularly Delacroix whom Baudelaire revered, could not accept this reproduction of reality through photography, “since the reality was considered alienating and even oppressive” (184). In his second chapter, he examines the works of André Breton, especially Nadja and L’Amour fou. For Breton, photography plays an important role in surrealist aesthetics: “It allowed him to describe what could not be described by mere words” (186). Breton uses photographs in Nadja to explore the idea of mental illness. Taminiaux’s extensive knowledge of works on the history of mental disorders in France is apparent here. Breton uses photography to illustrate his texts and to link literature and photography. In discussing Walter Benjamin’s essay Petite histoire de la photographie, Taminiaux explains that it was during the 1920s and 1930s, with the rise of the Dada and Surrealist avant-garde, that photography started to be perceived as an art. In his third chapter, Taminiaux examines Barthes’s famous essay La Chambre claire. The novelty for Taminiaux is the fact that Barthes wrote a very subjective text focusing on the “I” and expressing his emotions at the sight of old pictures of his mother. Taminiaux explains in detail the differences between studium and Reviews 803 punctum. The two main differences between Benjamin and Barthes according to Taminiaux are that for Barthes, pictures are “defined by their singularity” (105) and should not be “treated as elements of a vast collection” (105). In his last chapter , Taminiaux focuses on Paul Valéry’s 1939 discourse before the Académie Fran- çaise. This speech, entitled “Le Discours du centenaire de la photographie,” given just before the Second World War when photography was not yet viewed as an academic concept, proposed to “demonstrate the possible relationship between literature and photography” (154); and that speech changed everything because “for him, even the best descriptive writer could never match the essential precision of the new medium” (147). For Valéry, photography is modern because it “is the result of technical accomplishments” and “because it allows for a specific bind between the origins of mankind and...

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