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This is how an image makes icons. Immortal youth. Lots of sex appeal. Rebellious energy and coolness: the hair artfully tangled, the neck tie as if blown away by the wind, the lips (offended?) pressed together, the eyes twisted upwards, the look as if intoxicated and insane. David Bowie, James Dean, Jim Morrison or Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Holden Caulfield - or: Arthur Rimbaud. The Bowies and Morrisons are copies. The photo became famous with Rimbaud, is him and is another, fits his image, the image that he and his lover Verlaine spread. The photographer, Étienne Carjat, it made immortal.
Étienne Carjat, 1828-1906, was always a little in the shadow of the great, successful colleague Nadar (real name: Gaspard-Félix Tournachon). Like Nadar, he was a photographer and caricaturist of the beautiful, rich and famous; like Nadar, he was a journalist, writer, publisher, bohemian. In Paris, where else! A photo self-portrait shows him in 1865 with a mischievous look, a little belly under the wide skirt, the temples already clearly thinned.
From the 1860s, he succeeds in photographs that are unparalleled in their density: 1862 a portrait of Charles Baudelaire, correctly dressed like a court assessor, he stares sternly, intensely and directly into the camera, no trace of debauchery or drug excesses, except perhaps the slightly shadowy eye sockets. Baudelaire, of all people, who considered photography the "refuge" of lazy, untalented painters. In Carjat's portrait, Eugène Delacroix himself seems to mutate into one of these monstrous creatures of the Delacroix world - is it the narrow, finely contoured mouth and the compressed lips? Like Baudelaire and many contemporaries, Delacroix looked down on photography - which didn't stop artists from living the same bohemian life, socializing in the same circles, and using photography, not just their own portraits. Painters also use photographs as models for their paintings. Like Nadar, Carjat concentrated in his portraits on the person, his gestures and facial expressions. The background remained deliberately simple and without decoration, "typical" photographic accessories such as a curtain or piano were absent, accents were created primarily by the "Rembrandt" lighting in the usually dark surroundings (the so-called Chiaroscuro effect), the facial features modulated by light and shadow, and the pose. Gustave Courbet had himself photographed countless times by his friend Carjat for greeting cards, the cartes de visite, depending on his mood and the occasion with a completely different message: for him Étienne Carjat was his biographer.
In 1871, Carjat supported the uprising of the French National Guard and workers and the socialist Paris Commune, which lasted only 72 days and was crushed by the bourgeois Thiers government. 1871 also saw the creation of the famous Rimbaud photograph, which today survives only as a copy, because: In January 1872, a dispute over Rimbaud's impertinent behavior escalated at an artist's regulars' table; Rimbaud injured Étienne Carjat, and Carjat is said to have then destroyed all the original photographic plates of the Rimbaud portraits. He sold the studio in the mid-1870s. Was it the political situation, the Restoration after 1871, or the financial woes of the photo studio? Little is known about Carjats' last 30 years.
This is how an image makes icons. Immortal youth. Lots of sex appeal. Rebellious energy and coolness: the hair artfully tangled, the neck tie as if blown away by the wind, the lips (offended?) pressed together, the eyes twisted upwards, the look as if intoxicated and insane. David Bowie, James Dean, Jim Morrison or Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Holden Caulfield - or: Arthur Rimbaud. The Bowies and Morrisons are copies. The photo became famous with Rimbaud, is him and is another, fits his image, the image that he and his lover Verlaine spread. The photographer, Étienne Carjat, it made immortal.
Étienne Carjat, 1828-1906, was always a little in the shadow of the great, successful colleague Nadar (real name: Gaspard-Félix Tournachon). Like Nadar, he was a photographer and caricaturist of the beautiful, rich and famous; like Nadar, he was a journalist, writer, publisher, bohemian. In Paris, where else! A photo self-portrait shows him in 1865 with a mischievous look, a little belly under the wide skirt, the temples already clearly thinned.
From the 1860s, he succeeds in photographs that are unparalleled in their density: 1862 a portrait of Charles Baudelaire, correctly dressed like a court assessor, he stares sternly, intensely and directly into the camera, no trace of debauchery or drug excesses, except perhaps the slightly shadowy eye sockets. Baudelaire, of all people, who considered photography the "refuge" of lazy, untalented painters. In Carjat's portrait, Eugène Delacroix himself seems to mutate into one of these monstrous creatures of the Delacroix world - is it the narrow, finely contoured mouth and the compressed lips? Like Baudelaire and many contemporaries, Delacroix looked down on photography - which didn't stop artists from living the same bohemian life, socializing in the same circles, and using photography, not just their own portraits. Painters also use photographs as models for their paintings. Like Nadar, Carjat concentrated in his portraits on the person, his gestures and facial expressions. The background remained deliberately simple and without decoration, "typical" photographic accessories such as a curtain or piano were absent, accents were created primarily by the "Rembrandt" lighting in the usually dark surroundings (the so-called Chiaroscuro effect), the facial features modulated by light and shadow, and the pose. Gustave Courbet had himself photographed countless times by his friend Carjat for greeting cards, the cartes de visite, depending on his mood and the occasion with a completely different message: for him Étienne Carjat was his biographer.
In 1871, Carjat supported the uprising of the French National Guard and workers and the socialist Paris Commune, which lasted only 72 days and was crushed by the bourgeois Thiers government. 1871 also saw the creation of the famous Rimbaud photograph, which today survives only as a copy, because: In January 1872, a dispute over Rimbaud's impertinent behavior escalated at an artist's regulars' table; Rimbaud injured Étienne Carjat, and Carjat is said to have then destroyed all the original photographic plates of the Rimbaud portraits. He sold the studio in the mid-1870s. Was it the political situation, the Restoration after 1871, or the financial woes of the photo studio? Little is known about Carjats' last 30 years.