The Photographic Reproduction of Artworks:
a Tool and an Argument in the History of Art? 

An analysis of the private photography collection of the French art historian Marcel Aubert (1884–1962), preserved at the photo archive of the École du Louvre. Since the beginning of photography, the encounter of art and photography has resulted in an inseparable dialectic. The reproduction of art works changed the conditions of art history as a university discipline. Soon it became an indispensable tool for art historians. Erwin Panofsky (1892 –1968) describes well the role of photography as a main weapon in the history of art as “Who has the most pictures wins.” Marcel Aubert (1884 –1962), a renowned French art historian and medievalist, possessed a private photographic collection, including almost 2000 glass plates. These are today preserved today at the photo archive of the Ecole du Louvre. The collection represents reproductions of architecture and sculpture from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance which he collected throughout his life to illustrate his seminars, conferences and publications. Apart from his own pictures, he acquired photographic reproductions from photographers and publishing houses specialized in art reproductions and from earlier collections. However, the photographers mostly remain anonymous due to missing references on the glass plates. The methodological approach used in analyzing these photographs was to consider them as autonomous objects that could not be reduced to merely their visual content. They have their own history, materiality and documentary value. On the one hand the research reflects on the aesthetic, commercial and political aspects of this photo collection, and on the other the use of them in art history discourse.

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Stella Melbye, born in Hamburg (German), graduated from the University of Hamburg (Germany) with a Bachelor’s in Art History and Media Studies, and from the École du Louvre (Paris, France) with a Master’s in Museology. She focused her studies on photography and particularly on interrogation of the status of art reproduction and photo archives. She plans to concentrate this into more detailed research in the form of a dissertation. After her studies, she worked for the Centre Pompidou and Musée Carnavalet as a curatorial assistant and currently works as a cultural coordinator and archivist at the agency of the French star architect Dominique Perrault.

 

Date
Thu, 12/01/2016 - 13:30
Weight
5