Edições Edição nº6 The eye, its powers and the photographic camera: 19th century ideas of "automatism" | The eye, its powers and the photographic camera: 19th century ideas of "automatism" |
|
|
| Autor: Margarida Medeiros | |||||||
| 02-Jul-2007 | |||||||
Página 3 de 5 That’s why it is comprehensive the zigzag between the enormous euphoria that comes from those who believe in the magic generalization of scientific procedures to forensic science, procedures that scientist had left behind, and the disphoria that comes from those which refuse to abandon this same positivism, deluded by such an idea can be true. It is the case of an article, published under the title “Ancient and Modern Superstitions in Science”, in The Manufacturer and the Builder:
A recent notion was that the likeness of a murderer could be found photographed inside the eye of his victim. Of course, such an idea could only arise in the in the brain of a person utterly ignorant of photography or anatomy, and unware of the complexity of conditions of which a complete and regular sucession is required in order to make image a possibility. Notwithstanding this, the idea had taken such a complete possession of the public mind that, in a recent murder casein New York, a scientific expert was required publicly to declare, at the post-mortem examination, that no image had been found in the eye of the victim.[1] The photographic camera was invented having as a metaphorical and epistemic model in the mechanism of vision: image reversal, perspective… Within the optographic fabula, we are dealing with the opposite: the eye works, now, as a camera. Now, after having invented a machine that copied and supported the human eye, the eye itself can allow itself the power of the machine: to fix an image. The power of the machine is thence fore being transferred to the human body, and, under the sign of modernity, is now able to dissolve the frontiers between body and machine. Other frontiers are also being broken at this time: between interior and exterior (with the “private man”), the animated and unanimated (with experimental medicine), rational and irrational (with psychology and psychoanalysis of unconscious), life and death (with ghost stories and spirit photography).
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called. They are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism. A certain period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was not forever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?[2]
The idea of Poe in this “tale” seems clear: he wants to exorcise the perception of the inevitable death (in a certain way to control it), once the eternity of the soul is not so close to the conscience anymore, but was replaced with the conscience of a perishing body. This inquisition about death seems to be absent in optography’s comments, who appear to be much more fantastic or, on the antipodes, just prosaic. But a similar interest upon the body as a dispositif, as perishing matter and as a mechanical device shows us that they are heirs of the romantic and ghostly worries of Poe. This interest about the individual conscience of precarious live and death seems to be coherent, in Poe, with his fascination of the detective novel, which he invented[3]. The two kinds of texts Poe wrote correspond to the two major tendencies of his era: romanticism and scientific positivism. The “the image in the dead man’s eye” is, at the same time, at work with the secularization society, in the way that death is no more just a God’s affair, but a secular matter, dealing with doctors and… detectives. Edgar Poe’s ghosts are just a metaphor of a so prosaic and brief life, as Oscar Wilde, at the end of the century, will characterize in “The Canterville’s ghost”. To fix the photographic image by means of daguerreotype was an almost miraculous fact, and that nature becomes more wonderful than art is an extraordinary experience.[4] The optographic tale was reinvested along the 80’s decade, more and more associated with crime investigation. This one was turning to great interest not only for institutions, like Scotland Yard, but to general public. In 1887 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle publishes “A study in scarlet”, developing the analytical crime novel Poe had initiated on a forensic basis. The urban scene, with its murders[5], its strangers, its urban anonymity, were in the center of city anxieties. From the late 60’s, the news and articles related to “optography” are always in connection with some crime scene, the newest urban news passion, sometimes quoting Kuhne and Boll’s discoveries. They never talk about ”optography”, but just “Images in dead Eyes”, “Murder and Photography”, Photography and Crime”, “Retinal image” or “Visual Purple”. On the other hand, neither Boll nor Kuhne never wrote about forensic applications of ”optography” or were they really ahead of an eventual connection with police matters; these scientists seem to have been led to these experiments as an extension of their research of photochemistry phenomena of the interior of the retina, now that they have discovered it with the ophthalmoscope; a new research field, that of the Physiology of vision, had been opened. And the truth is, although the big noise that has been made around the idea of photographing the dead person’s eyes for forensic instruction, nobody could ever do anything with it.
The conclusions published in the papers were always very careful and obviously contradictory. There was always something very net in the image of the victim about the murder, but finally, that was not so net at all, and police couldn’t do anything upon it. In one of the numerous notes on this matter, in the Amateur Photographer of January 11 of 1895, near the ”scientific” turn of the century, a very expanded article on the subject is published, about fabulous facts occurred around a murder:
A startling development was made in the Shearman murder case today. A photograph of the murderer has been discovered. Both of Mrs. Sherman’ eyes are believed to hold pictures of the man who murdered her. (…) This morning it was decided to proceed on that theory, and taking Fred Marsh they visited the Shearman farm. Mr. Marsh with his Kodak photographed one eye of Mrs Shearman, and the form a man was found there, a big, burly man, wearing a long overcoat, with the cloth of his trousers badly wrinkled. The face of the man was not obtained. This revelation caused sensation at the farmhouse. Undertaker Partridge was present, and says the photograph of the man’s form and clothing on the one eye of Mrs Shearman, which exposed to Mr Marsh’s camera was perfectly distinct. It is hoped the other eye will furnish the means of identifying the murderer by giving his face. (…)After the first surprise of the startling discovery made by Mr. Marsh was over, he made a most careful examination, which clearly revealed the man’s form. He was apparently a big man with a long heavy overcoat unbuttoned, and which reached below the knees. The wrinkles in the trousers could be plainly seen, and one foot was behind the other, with the knee bending as if a stooping posture about to take a step. Dr. Bowers, the Coroner, then made an examination, and says he saw the picture as distinctly as he could have seen a man standing in front of him.E. G. Partridge, Albert Hazeltine, and the Rev. Stoddard who were at the house when the examination was made, were called into the room and examined the eye, each of them verifying the statement as describing the man in similar language. The article’s author comments, at the end of the story, that ”this idea is not new, but so far has not certainly been proved”, but it questions how ”a chemical image so delicate as it must be in the retina remain sufficiently long after death for microscopic examination be possible?”
This text shows us the set of contradictions that circled this theme and allows us to see the phantasmal side of the question. In one-way the image proves, but, on the other, it can’t, because the decisive element to the identification, the face, is always blurred, undefined in the retinal image. At the end of this euphoric article we can ask: the three men that confirmed what the photographer and the scientist had stated, what did they really confirmed? In fact, or with a positive value, there is nothing. They confirmed an image that seems to be a projection, but not anything with an indexical referent. And when the journalist questions the real possibility of such a retinal examination, the reader can’t store anything reliable on his hands. There is no murder’s face, but, also, there is no confidence in the device of representation. So, what does remain?
It seems that what remains is just the desire that something could be done about that matter of the camera-eye; it means a deep desire, and a believe, that the observational powers of microscope and photographic camera, tools of the truth, could be anticipated by the body by its own, even if the retinal image would need the both to come out of the eye. But we cannot range the discourse about self-made images by the eye in a kind of linear opposition between science and ignorance. The euphoric mood comes from the scientific minds, like W. Bird or Gamgee, such as from common people not used with scientific protocols. Even if the first ones never entered through fantasy respecting to facts, and although the comments that they do about such matter keep respecting the scientific language of Boll and Kuhne, they don’t give up an association with the spirit of the time about the dream of a body automatism who could allow the making of images by itself and they even dream of inscribing this possibility in the context of the marvelous progresses of XIX century.
[1] The Manufacturer and the Builder, vol. 2, Issue 10, October 1870, 297 [2] “The Premature Burial" (A), Dollar Newspaper, July 31, 1844, in Poe 2002, p.96 [3] In fact, the "The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was his first crime novel, originally published in the Graham's Magazine in 1841, during the period he was co-editor. [4] W.S. Bird, “The Photography of Vision”, The Phot. Journal/Journal of the Phot. Soc., New Series, 1.-3, p. 23.5.1879, p. 93 [5] The New York Times has, at this time, a daily column entitled “Murders”, where they publish lots of little notes about murders in the city. |
|||||||
Working Papers
| Home |
| Edições |
| Pesquisa |
| Mapa do Site |
| CECL |
