Theatre Photography in Nineteenth Century France: Document, Archive or Pure Fiction?

Authors

  • Arnaud Rykner Institut d’Etudes Théâtrales de la Sorbonne Nouvelle et Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris

Keywords:

theatre photography, France, Belle Epoque, document, photographic archives

Abstract

Indoor performance photography, which was born in France on the occasion of the Paris World Exhibition in 1889, remains a problematic theatrical and  media object to this day. But at the Belle Epoque and until the Second World War at least, it requires to be approached with all the more caution because it  is always the fruit of multiple manipulations, either at the time of the making of the shots (mandatory posing of actors, specific lighting, etc.), or at the time  of their “post-production” (printing, but especially edition in review or volume). A complex and particularly rich object that must be studied in its context  (publications or archives), stage photography is then offered as much as a document to be deciphered as a fiction to be deconstructed.

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Published

2021-11-22

How to Cite

Rykner, A. (2021). Theatre Photography in Nineteenth Century France: Document, Archive or Pure Fiction?. Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai - Dramatica, 66(2), 47–72. Retrieved from https://dramatica.ro/index.php/j/article/view/150