EDGING ON PORNOGRAPHY: NUDE DAGUERREOTYPES IN THE GETTY COLLECTION

Object of the Week | Caitlin McCurdy

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Rear of a Daguerreotype advertising portraits and lessons. Source

With the advent of any new artistic technology, from the earliest, crudest sculptures of early mankind, to painting or photography, one of the first things to be depicted seems to be the nude form of women. The ancient Greeks did it, 15th century painters like Sandro Botticelli did it, and with the advent of Daguerreotypes by Francois Daguerre in 1839, a technology was made available that allowed a larger audience to produce and distribute highly sophisticated reproductions of the female form. Each Daguerreotype was a unique image on a silvered copper plate, and portrait studios quickly became commercial enterprises. This inflation of the portrait market allowed a second market to develop for portraits of a more scandalous nature.

This week’s Object of the Week is a collection of nude Daguerreotypes from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The museum has over 2000 Daguerreotypes, but the female nudes reveal a history of Paris’ 19th century porn market, and where lines were being delineated between artistic representation and pornography. In researching for this article, I found that often Daguerreotypes were being defined between this line of what 19th century morality would allow and what it deemed too vulgar for the masses.


Example of a more demure nude. Source

Daguerreotypes did not render the colour of the subjects they captured, so many were coloured by hand. The vast majority of Daguerreotype studio owners were men, so all examples of nudes in this article were taken by men. The first daguerreotype highlighted in this article, seen above, depicts a woman in a transparent gown, standing against a mirror. Her hands, up in her hair braiding, conceal her breasts from view. This photo suggests a spontaneous glimpse into a private moment, a teasing of nudity rather than the more provocative examples to come.

The next example is described in the Getty collection as a study of a woman resting on a divan in profile. This appears to be the generally accepted “artist’s study” of female nudity, rather than outright pornography. Her pose mimics the stance of ancient marble statues, the nude of a different era.


An "Artist's Study". Source

The images tend to begin being described as pornographic when there is more than one subject in the frame. The following, titled Two Women Embracing is described as “posturing teetered between artist’s study and pornography”. The poses appear to be more for the pleasure of the observer, positioned to be revealed to the camera. It feels voyeuristic, looking in at an intimate spontaneous moment between lovers. However, knowing that the process behind producing a Daguerreotype could take several minutes, the models likely had to hold this pose for an unnatural amount of time while the photo was being taken.


Two Women Embracing. Source.

The question I keep returning to in my study of nudity within museum collections is when does the female body switch from an artistic study of form to pornography. My first, instinctual answer is that this switch occurred with the emergence of photographic representation of contemporary women, as they may appear more relevant and scandalizing to contemporary museum audiences than a centuries old painting or sculpture. The reality, however, is likely more complex than my answer. There are examples of paintings that pushed this distinction too far, crossing the line between artistic appreciation of form into more explicitly erotic depictions. But the availability of technologies like the Daguerreotype allowed a greater number of people to create reproductions of nudity.


Voyeurism and the Nude. Source

These Daguerreotypes were produced and sold out of Paris’ underground porn market, a reaction against crackdowns on a perceived morality crisis. In the example above, Two Nudes in Boudoir Studio Setting, the viewer is again intruding on a fabricated private moment. The shape of the frame also suggests an air of voyeurism, as if they are peering through a viewfinder at the scene within. The quiet intimacy of the subjects, leaning against the surrounding objects of the room reflects common artistic practices within the medium. The women in these images mirror the positions of the singular artist’s study of female nudes, and yet the presence of both women causes these examples to cross the line over into the pornographic.

Why is this? All these examples are functionally the same, pictures taken by men of nude women in similar time periods. My best estimation at this time is that the presence of another contains with it the suggestion of further action. What happened in the boudoir moments after the Daguerreotype was taken? Perhaps therein lies the answer, what makes these images pornographic lies in the voyeur’s imagination.