By analyzing three daguerreotypes representing the rue du Faubourg-du-Temple on June 25 and 26, 1848, historian Olivier Ihl draws a “barricade geography” of Paris and retraces a moment in urban history. These photos show the materialization of a collective adventure at the start of the Second Republic.
Recounting the “bloody battles” of the summer of 1848, Maurice Agulhon remarks: “We have a hundred stories of the days of June. » Many writings were valuable to him, in fact, in returning to this “depreciated” revolution, just as they were essential to Maurizio Gribaudi and Michèle Riot-Sarcey who, setting out in search of the “spirit of 1848”, wanted to remedy the amnesia of this revolt. To compensate for the forgetfulness of these four days of Parisian combat, they also had recourse to a whole period iconography (drawings, lithographs, prints, engravings and paintings). It is in this line that falls The overturned Barricadea short essay which focuses on three daguerreotypes representing the rue du Faubourg-du-Temple on June 25 and 26, 1848, before and after the attacks.
Olivier Ihl continues the recent historiographical revival around the Spring of Peoples, just as much as he enriches it with a photographic perspective. In order to shed light on the exact location of the shooting, the vague identity of the operator and the political significance of his act, the historian traces an entire dense network of meticulously collected knowledge, reconnecting the lost threads of this ” moment of urban history” that “no journalistic investigation documents” (p. 43).
Because images show, but say nothing: photography has this paradoxical effect of exposing everything to view, of bringing “unseen” details to prominence and, at the same time, silently preserving its secrets. To understand the scope of daguerreotypes and their meaning, it is necessary to undertake the analysis of the “journey” of the image, as well as to map the “photographic event” (p. 10) itself, it is that is to say, to include it in the history of “this great village that was the rue du Faubourg-du-Temple”.
In the barricaded street
It is as a specialist in the Republican Party that Olivier Ihl excels here. In order to “find the exact location of the photo taken to establish the marital status of the operator”, he cross-checks the information visible on the photos, with an abundant wealth of previously unpublished archives (cadastral plans, real estate notebooks, notarial deeds). , inventories, etc.), draws an entire “barricade geography” and highlights the social and family framework that made the photographic act possible. Because “everything happened on the third floor of a building located at number 92 rue du Faubourg-du-Temple” (p. 29).
It is a question of making the social history of the street, of bringing life back to a populous neighborhood of small artisans who occupy cramped and poorly heated housing. With detail and precision, Olivier Ihl gives flesh to the vanished world that the photos retain. It is an anthill street made up of passages, plots and workshops spread over several floors, a series of establishments where the profession is “one with the habitat”. In support of the immobile clichés, he summons the “thousands of individuals (who) pile up behind the buildings” of this “rebellious and combative” street (p. 98).
As Quentin Deluermoz pointed out, in this context where family logic and neighborhood relationships take precedence, “separating politics from social would be an error, as the two are indissolubly linked here”. Hence Olivier Ihl’s interest in the “properly political dynamics of daguerreotypes” (p. 39). A dynamic which is anchored in this “democ-soc stronghold”, in the effervescence of its neighborhood clubs, but also in a host of barricade figures such as these mechanical workers who became barricade leaders (Emmanuel Barthélémy for example), those who were accused of being the leaders of the insurrection (Captain Lécuyer, “democratic officer”) or ideologues tribunes like Hippolyte Guérineau.
The essay here borders on microhistory. It also highlights forgotten unknowns (the washerwoman with the white cap, Pauline Pompon, punctum of the first photo which particularly touches the author) as certain prominent figures of socialism of the time who were well established in this militant community (let us cite Alexandre Deschapelles, organizer of “epicurean festivals” which brought together the discontented of the Republic, co-signatory , with Robert-Richard O’Reilly, from The Law of the Peoplepublished in March 1848). The historian highlights the excitement of an intense life of ideas promulgated by the numerous lithographic bookstores which disseminated “a culture of images closely linked to “new ideas”” (p. 103).
Thibault, committed photographer
As the somewhat inaccurate subtitle of the work indicates, History of a photographOlivier Ihl is interested in a medium patented in 1839 which, although fashionable (Daguerreotypomania de Maurisset attests to this), still seemed revolutionary in the 1840s and was just beginning his journalistic career. His analysis of the three daguerreotypes is meritorious in that it puts an end to the fabrications which surrounded the name of their author and in that it explores the advent of a new regime of visibility which would soon be put at the service of the administration (notably police) and the press (two of the photos are published in theIllustration). Baudelaire spoke of photography as a “very humble servant”.
Deciphering the indications buried in the photographic object, the historian reinscribes the image in this historically unprecedented culture which combined “industrial application and artistic vocation, philanthropic experimentation and worldly pleasure” (p. 19). Thibault, the photographer, evolved in a circle of inventors with a taste for progress and experimentation. Amateur keen on politics (he chaired the Faubourg du Temple Fraternal Club), he was an “occasional short story writer” who aspired to republican socialism. Ihl closely follows his political trajectory, interpreting his photos as proof of his convictions (dream of a democratic and social Republic) and his disillusions (the quieted street as a memory of a lost cause).
Through comparisons made with the engraved versions of the photos and with other images of the same events (lithographs, oils on canvas, gouaches), the historian demonstrates his concern to highlight photography as a “constitutively historical” medium. Inseparable from a public space with asserted political aspirations, the photos show the “face of the people” according to Thibault: a barricade, a street, an event. However, when taken up in the press, they could take on contradictory meanings, testifying to the “relief of the bourgeois world at the overthrow of the barricades”, as much as “the entry of the masses into politics” (p. 128).
But this ontologically photographic instability is never really questioned in the essay. Subjected to the “fascinating, hypnotic character of the photo”, the historian seems somewhat “bewitched by the power of authentication that it generates”. He admits: “On the plate, the infinity of details makes you dizzy” (p. 60). Taking up an entire positivist vocabulary, he does not call into question the nineteenth-century discourse on the rationality, scientificity, objectivity and naturalism of photography. The essay even becomes confused when it states, converselythat “objectivity in photography is an illusion” (p. 121-122) and highlights the importance of subjectivity and singularity specific to Thibault: he “showed the end of his republic” (p. 130 ).
Photography and its ambivalences remain unthought. And this unthought is reflected in the use of a sometimes approximate metaphorical vocabulary, whether in the chosen titles or in the analysis of the relationship between written and photographed testimonies. The fact remains that this essay brings a new, visual and moving dimension to the usual “writings” of history.