First Hoax Photograph or Deep Social Analysis?
Do not fret. The man in this photo is still alive… or was when it was taken – but many are unsure of his intention here. Many have awarded him the spot of “First Hoax Photograph”. But the man in the image, Hippolyte Bayard, may have had a deeper meaning than just posing as though he had just passed. In this photograph, Bayard presents himself as a victim who ended his own life by drowning, “provoked by the failure of the French authorities to recognize his own discovery of the photographic process as equal to Daguerre’s pioneering work.”
According to one account: “Earlier in 1839, Bayard put together what is considered by some to be the first-ever photographic exhibition, in an auction room in Paris. This historical context suggests that the self-portrait can be read as a crossroads at which issues of recognition, authorship, display, visibility, invisibility, truth and illusion meet and play off of one another.” You can read more about this fascinating misunderstanding of historical context in ‘The Impossible Photograph: Hippolyte Bayard’s Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man’.
