More than 160 years before smartphones and selfie sticks allowed even the most inexperienced shutterbug to snap a photo of themselves, Hippolyte Bayard was turning his camera on himself.
The year was 1840. Several competing photographic processes had just been made public for the first time the year before, effectively introducing the medium of photography to the world. Bayard, a bureaucrat who worked at the Ministry of Finance in Paris and took pictures on weekends or his lunch hour, was one of the first photographers to practice the art of the self-portrait. Examples of these are on view in the new Getty Center exhibition Hippolyte Bayard: A Persistent Pioneer.
With himself as the subject, Bayard could experiment with new photographic processes, set a scene, and pose in front of the camera, creating images that represented his hobbies, frustrations, and achievements. Sound familiar?
“The earliest photographers wanted to capture people in photographs. Bayard was one of the first to actually succeed,” says Carolyn Peter, the exhibition’s cocurator. He also demonstrated that photography was a new art form. “The public was so taken by the realistic depictions of the world in photography, but he was saying that you can also make things up. You can stage things.”
Bayard in the Garden
Self-portraits were an appealing solution in those early days of photography largely because taking a picture required a long, labor-intensive process, explains Peter. Photographers had to set their cameras in front of their (motionless) subjects for anywhere between 20 minutes and three hours—a daunting ask for any human being—to expose the sensitized surface (metal, paper, or glass) to enough light to create the image.
“He probably didn’t want to subject others to this endurance test, but he still wanted to try and work on his photography techniques. Gradually, the amount of time it took to make a photo shortened, maybe down to around 10 minutes, and finally down to seconds,” Peter said.
In a series of self-portraits from the 1840s, Bayard posed himself in his or his family’s gardens, among plants and tools, emphasizing his passion for horticulture. The outdoor setting was a necessity as it offered plenty of natural light. He adopted several different configurations of items and positions in each portrait. Notice how in one image (above left) he hid his feet behind greenery, as if he were planted in the earth.
“Today artists, along with the rest of us, still try a lot of different positions and poses with slight variations when we are making self-portraits,” Peter says.
Bayard as Dramatist
Perhaps Bayard’s best-known photo is his Drowned Man (1840), in which he slumps over, partially covered by a sheet, eyes closed, as if he had perished. Bayard created three versions of the image, changing the pose and props in each one, and eventually added this over-the-top lament to the back of the final version:
“The corpse of the gentleman that you see here...is that of M. Bayard, inventor of the process you have just seen....To my knowledge, for about three years this ingenious and indefatigable researcher has been working to perfect his invention....The Government, which has given so much to M. Daguerre, said it could do nothing for M. Bayard, and the unfortunate man drowned himself. Oh! The precariousness of human affairs!”
Clearly, Bayard had a few frustrations about his position in the photography world and about how little respect he felt he had been given in comparison to fellow photographer Louis Daguerre. This self-portrait allowed him to express his woes in a humorous and, yes, dramatic way, perhaps inspired by his connections to the theater.
“One of his very best friends from childhood on was Edmond Geffroy, a famous actor, so Bayard hung out with actors and theater people as well as fine artists and writers,” Peter says. “He had this connection to theatricality and theater. He attended a lot of plays. So I think that influenced him.”
A Special Effects Pioneer
In the 1860s, Bayard opened a portrait studio where customers could pay to have their pictures taken. Exposure times had been dramatically reduced, making it significantly easier for ordinary folks to sit for photographs. Bayard continued to experiment, using himself as a subject. Here he combined two negatives to make it look as though he is having a conversation with himself (or an imaginary identical twin?). This is 100 years before The Parent Trap was released!
“He’s just got this sense of humor and this desire to keep playing around,” says Peter.
A Self-Portrait of Pride
Bayard might have felt profoundly underacknowledged for his work in the 1840s, but it turns out he just needed to wait a little to get his due. In 1863 he was awarded the cross of the French Legion of Honor, a prestigious award bestowed in recognition of his contributions to photography. He took the portrait above while wearing the badge, showing off what must have been one of his proudest achievements. Bayard retired from photography soon after.
Bayard’s selfies are now more than 160 years old, but selfie-takers of today seem to be (unconsciously) following the same principles Bayard experimented with. He was one of the first to show that photography could represent not just the literal world but also how you wanted to present yourself. While selfies may appear to be a new phenomenon spawned by the reverse-camera button on smartphones, selfie aficionados should pay proper homage to Bayard for pioneering this art form.
“Today, selfies often include humor. Photographers invest a lot of strategic thought into how they want to present themselves. Selfies are performative and create something that isn’t fully realistic. Bayard was also conscious of the power of photography to visually imagine other worlds and invent different versions of himself.”
Hippolyte Bayard: A Persistent Pioneer is on view at the Getty Center through July 7, 2024.
