This article explores the following question: at the end of the nineteenth century, how did the scientific community, among others, come to be increasingly preoccupied with underwater photography, and how could this underwater world, and its attributes, be made visible? Or to put it another way, how was an apparatus constructed that made photographic representations of the seabed possible? The desire to see and the need for these representations can also be understood as a battle against darkness (that of the underwater world). This battle is resolved by the subtle use of the spectrum of values between black and white, and the adaptation of a representational technique to an environment. Thus we can see how the value of photographic gray also contains an ambivalence: it is simultaneously a solution (shifting away from black) and a disappointment (the lack of contrast and thus the lack of visibility of the object represented).

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At a time when photographic standards were being established (especially due to photography’s increasing industrialization), Louis Boutan became fascinated by photographic representations of the underwater world. Young biologist working on his thesis at the Laboratoire Arago, an Oceanological Observatory in Banyuls-sur-Mer in the south of France, Boutan will work hard to develop photographic techniques to achieve his goals.

Published in 1900, his book La Photographie sous-marine et les progrès de la photographie gives us a step-by-step overview of the author’s efforts to capture images of a world difficult to see with the eye, and to understand how this enterprise fits within the genealogy of photographic progress. The aim of the present essay is to set out a number of ideas about the conditions for visualizing a marine world, particularly in connection with the invention of the aquarium, but also with astronomical observation. We will see that there were indeed links between the visualization of the sky and the water.[1]

Louis Boutan was a scientist specializing in the depths of the sea. In 1894, he began his thesis on Fissurella, small crustaceans that he studied in Banyuls-sur-Mer. In order to directly observe this small crustacean, he learned to dive in a diving suit. Lamenting that he was unable to return with images of what he had seen while diving, he decided to create various photographic apparatuses able to faithfully capture representations of the underwater world. His photographic enterprise can be divided into two distinct periods: a first stage that can be described as an adaptation of the photographic technique to the aquatic world, during which he made his way through technical difficulties, and a second stage in which he used artificial electric lighting to succeed in his photographic project. For this last stage, Boutan will have to bring back images from the sea’s depths and darkness (up to 50 meters), to “penetrate” the darkness, as Nadar wrote of his artificially lit images brought back from the shadows of the catacombs and sewers of Paris in the early 1860s.[2]

In 1900, the same year as his book La Photographie sous-marine et les progrès de la photographie [Underwater photography and the progress of photography] was published, slides of Boutan’s photographs were shown in the Palais de l’Optique at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris. The Palais brought together a number of attractions, with the main one being the Great Telescope. With a length of sixty meters, this device made it possible to see the moon as if it were just sixty-seven meters away from visitors. Because of its monumental size, the telescope was mounted in a fixed horizontal position and equipped with a siderostat that redirected the light coming from the observed astronomical objects. The image of the moon was projected and intended to be admired on the screen, or as a subject to photograph. This was not the only spectacle offered to the public. The Palais de l’Optique housed attractions connected to optics and illumination, especially electric lighting. Most exhibits took the form of demonstrations, from simple reflection phenomena to others based on electricity, Roentgen Rays, and various sources of illumination. There were also illuminated projections of microscopic preparations, notably a magnified waterdrop with thousands of living creatures visible, reminiscent of the apparatuses of Martin Frobenius. These diverse electric demonstrations were interspersed with sessions described in an article on the exhibition as “amusing optical sessions”: “Projections of photographs taken at the bottom of the sea and from the top of a balloon, underground landscapes.”[3] The connection between the depths of the earth and sea with the heights of the sky is astonishing and raises many questions: how are representations of heaven and earth linked? What connections could spectators of these images make? What was the meaning of these relationships? 

There are two reasons for the simultaneity of astronomical vision with the display of not only Boutan’s undersea photographs, but also underground landscapes and the world seen from the basket of a balloon. The first, and the most obvious, relates the exhibition’s main theme, the electric light, which because it must move underground and undersea, facilitated the production of these photographic images. At marine depths beyond ten meters, water absorbs the light, making artificial illumination necessary. But this requires a complex, very expensive apparatus. The financing would be offered by François Deloncle, director of the company Optique, which constructed the Great Telescope. Boutan wrote: “He told me that Optique would supply me with the equipment needed to create an electric light source that I wanted to submerge with the camera, on the sole condition that I supply a certain number of slides in exchange, to be shown in the Palais de l’Optique during the exhibition.”

The second reason is more complex, or at least, less obvious. The representation of the seabed—a kind of visual conquest of an unexplored, largely unknown space—constitutes a mirror image of that of the moon as projected onto a screen by the immense telescope. And even if, as we will see, there are significant differences in the conception of this world, the gesture of returning from the seabed with photographic images is part of the same enterprise. Regarding the ignorance of this underwater world, Boutan wrote: “No matter what we do, following on from what we have so far followed, in relation to the sea, naturalists find themselves in the situation of someone living on the moon, sailing through ethereal spaces but unable to descend through the atmosphere surrounding the Earth; “What a change in circumstances, the day when it becomes possible to take photographs of the sea! Immediately we leave the domain of hypotheses and interpretation to enter that of exact, indisputable facts.”[4]

In his introductory chapter describing the current state of knowledge on the sea’s depths, Boutan asks: “What do we know about the part of the globe hidden beneath the seas and oceans?” Very little, in fact, he tells us. After the “complete night” of the Middle Ages, naturalists had up until then only made contact with the depths though instruments that he calls "blind". Boutan then followed in the footsteps of the scientists, popularizers, and writers who shared a yearning to see the ocean’s depths, an idea that counted historian Jules Michelet among its initiators. 

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The historian Jules Michelet was one such figure. With his book La Mer, published in 1861, Michelet was part of the construction of a new perception of the sea, which, according to him, had long remained “impenetrable.”[5] In his writing, he elaborates a complex image of the aquatic element, embracing the ocean as an object of history, as a horizon line, with the idea that it we “must enter into a right understanding with the Sea,”[6] to reveal the natural element through knowledge and vision. For Michelet, historicizing the sea is a way of understanding it, of containing it within increasingly precise knowledge. More than anything else, it was the desire to unravel the ocean’s mysteries that pushed Michelet to produce his book. In it, the ocean, this “fatal and eternal barrier between the two worlds”[7] takes the form of a “great Riddle,” becoming the “sphinx,” meaning those in “childhood and ignorance are astounded, astonied.”[8] For Michelet, it is the—real—darkness of the depths that makes the best metaphor for the unknown—a blind spot—yet to be illuminated. Michelet’s book is representative of the history of the development of our perception of the sea. His account is as much based on a new perception of the marine element, defending a “sympathy of nature,” rather than on a scientific knowledge that has expanded since the end of the eighteenth century. To our eyes, it manifests above all in the beginnings of an ever-increasing desire to see the abyss. The device of the aquarium already existed when Michelet wrote his book, but it was still far from popular, especially in France (the first public aquarium opened in the Jardin d’acclimatation several months after Michelet’s book was released), while in Great Britain, a public exhibition of aquariums had already been held in 1853.

The aquarium constitutes the first medium to allow the eye access to the underwater world.[9] Many authors have described it as a “glass house” that reveals the lives of the inhabitants contained within it. The aquarium is a “machine for seeing,” the optical principle of which is based on a double transparency. Unlike the underwater world, the aquarium offers a clear, immediate view of a reconstituted environment. It thus established a new way of seeing, one that would come to determine humanity’s relationship with the seabed. There is though, a fundamental difference between the aquarium that mediates our gaze and the direct vision we can have of this world.  

Boutan paid particular attention to the various aquariums when describing the Banyuls-sur-Mer Observatory. With its world of underwater animals, the aquarium attracted his attention as soon as he arrived. Describing his impression, he wrote: “In one of the tanks cemented in the wall, a ray of sunlight played in the middle of the water, and I approached to take a closer look.”[10] Noting the transparency of the water permitted by the apparatus, he launches into a very precise description of the contents of the optical box that is the aquarium. It offers an ideal point of view for the gaze; it would be just as important for photography. Boutan wrote that before he had the idea “to take photographs underwater, naturalists had been searching to create good photographic images of the animals held in captivity in aquariums.”[11] As he emphasizes, many attempts had already been made, but photographers were considerably hindered by the glittering, glassy surface of large aquariums’ walls. At the time, it was difficult to photograph an aquarium. Although the lighting system did provide enough light, the luminosity of the aquarium produced an imbalance that resulted in overexposure.

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The first person to successfully photograph animals in an aquarium, in a steady, accurate manner, was renowned physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey in 1890. To achieve this, he had a wall in his Naples villa drilled through to install an aquarium. Marey’s interest, though, lay in the dynamic movement of animals. Producing a photograph of the undersea landscape was not his intention; there was nothing of the picturesque about him. The aquarium was merely the site of his experiments. Animals were reduced to their physiological functions. After Marey, Paul Fabre, known as Fabre-Domergue, developed a technique to photograph the aquariums at the Concarneau Marine Station, where he wrote his doctoral thesis. An article in the Photo-Gazette of June 25, 1898, published his results alongside a reproduction. He first had the idea to cover the bottom of the aquarium with “a gray-painted screen, as the background of a landscape.”[12] As opposed to Marey’s rigidly scientific approach, which he refers to in his article, his intention was to arrange everything “as naturally as possible, in order to create a small aquatic landscape in harmony with the habits of the animals to be photographed.”[13] The idea was to reproduce an undersea landscape taking the environment into consideration. But he soon replaced natural lighting with “magnesium lighting.” The diagram reproduced here shows an overhead lighting system. He later made another major modification, which he explained in La Photographie des animaux aquatiques, published in 1899, which enabled him to take clear, bright, images of aquatic animals.

This is the difference between Fabre-Domergue and Boutan. One preferred the artistic approach—producing a picturesque landscape—the other taking a scientific approach—studying the environment. Boutan would ultimately turn the camera into an instrument to measure the underwater world rather than as an instrument to represent it. He recalled that in the field of astronomy, it was found that radiation invisible to the naked eye made an impression on photographic plates, meaning humanity was able to discover new invisible worlds lost in the immensity of space. For Boutan, from there, the photographic plate took on a “sixth sense.”[14] His detour into astronomical experimentation enables us to understand his unique relationship with photography, especially water photography. 

This comparison with astronomical photography is crucial. Because Boutan tried to transpose photography’s potentialities from the atmosphere to the water: “Since we can capture a landscape in the open air with no difficulty, why can’t we take a photograph at the bottom of the sea?”[15] Working from the principle that water is an environment more refractive than air, he had the idea to adapt his camera’s lens. Thus, it is the environment affecting the apparatus, and not, as with Fabre-Domergue, the environment adapted to the camera. He then successively considered placing the black box in a watertight box, pursuing the idea of immersion, taking it so far as to test immersion of the camera directly in the sea (“The plates themselves were in contact with the seawater”[16]). 

Apart from experimenting with immersing the plates, the overall images were mediocre. He deplored the resulting landscape of “a universal grayness; the contrasts on the different planes are not accentuated enough to produce sharp blacks and whites, and so the shots are inevitably dull.”[17] In the image, gray constitutes a limited value, without contrast. And Boutan wondered whether “the world of water is unsuitable for capturing good photographs.”[18] In actuality, for Boutan it was not the environment that was responsible but the photographic system. This was therefore what he improved. Notably, he conceived the idea of immersing a screen painted white to intensify the light; in the aqueous medium, darkness was his main obstacle.

After experimenting with the small white screen, Boutan decided to improve the apparatus with the addition of magnesium lighting. But above everything else, it was the electric light that Boutan felt would bring the project success, thanks especially to the funding from the director of the Palais de l’Optique.

In Boutan’s book, the description of the lighting installation is impressive and gives a sense of the size of the apparatus created to produce images. The first trials of underwater photography using electric light took place in late August 1899. As was his wont, Boutan shared his experience in great detail. The first test took place at night: “Here is the camera in the background. The background is illuminated, and all the objects in the lens’s field appear much sharper than during the day. There is a striking contrast between the darkness that surrounds us and the instantaneous illumination of the whole liquid mass.”[19]

Boutan immersed the camera and the lighting system. For the first shot, everything was done from a distance. Boutan asked himself: “Will there be an image? Has the impression taken during the short exposure? The answer was satisfying. The group of gorgons that we photographed clearly stand out against the dark background, and we noted the unexpected effects of photography taken with electric lighting. The subjects photographed stand out in considerable relief and show their contours distinctly, because the background isn’t illuminated and they are projected onto a kind of black screen.”[20]

Encouraged by this success, but wanting more than anything to photograph the marine world (meaning its depths), Boutan considered submerging the camera and electric lighting to a depth of fifty meters. Because the boat would be drifting—it could not be anchored—the camera was also in motion. Between the lens and the screen attached to the camera—and so caught in the same movement—there is no object, only water. Boutan wrote: “We can perhaps criticize this photograph for being one taken between two bodies of water and to have none of the interest found in a photograph taken against a background. This criticism is well-founded, and the experiment that I have just described only serves to show that the thickness of the layer of water is negligible in obtaining a clear photograph when the light source is immersed with the camera.”[21] We could say that Boutan abandons all notions of the landscape and the picturesque, concentrating solely on photographic visibility. Thus, while the image in front of our eyes shows only a screen, the goal is to photograph the aqueous world: Boutan was photographing a world without object, perhaps an abstraction. And we may be tempted to see it as more as an idea of a world, or at least an image based on the belief in language itself. There is nothing here except for what the image enunciates through language, saying: this is an underwater photograph taken at a depth of fifty meters. Through adding or apposing language, the screen takes on the role of an object-ground that becomes the manifestation of photographic visibility underwater. It becomes a kind of visual trick that enables the construction of an image of the depths of the liquid world. 

Notes

[1] This study is in part informed by two important articles: that of Edward Eigen titled “Dark Space and the Early Days of Photography as a Medium,” published in Grey Room in 2001, and Marie Robert’s on Boutan published in the exhibition catalogue Né(e)s de l’écume et des rêves at MuMa in Le Havre in 2018. This work also continues my research on the public aquarium published in Aquariorama. Archéologie d’un dispositif (Milan: Mimésis, 2022).

[2] Nadar wrote of his attempts to photograph the catacombs of Paris: “In order to perfect them, we needed a second source of softened light, penetrating the shaded parts.” See Félix Nadar, When I Was a Photographer, trans. Eduardo Cadava and Liana Theodoratou (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015), 238.

[3] Rousselet, Louis. L’Exposition universelle de 1900. (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1901), 284.

[4] Boutan, Louis, La Photographie sous-marine et les progrès de la photographie (Paris : Schleicher frères, éditeurs, 1900), 142.

[5] Jules Michelet, The Sea (New York: Rudd and Carleton, 1861), 20.

[6] Michelet, The Sea, 30.

[7] Michelet, The Sea, 11.

[8] Michelet, The Sea, 19.

[9] The diving suit is also a medium, but it implies immersion. The probe, on the other hand, is also a medium, but is more indirect.  

[10] Boutan, 120.

[11] Boutan, 266.

[12] Fabre-Domergue, "Photographie d’aquarium", Photo-Gazette 8 (1898), 145. 

[13] Fabre-Domergue, "Photographie d’aquarium", Photo-Gazette 8 (1898), 145.

[14] Boutan, La Photographie, 103.

[15] Boutan, La Photographie, 147-148.

[16] Boutan, La Photographie, 173.

[17] Boutan, La Photographie, 104.

[18] Boutan, La Photographie, 189.

[19] Boutan, La Photographie, 254.

[20] Boutan, La Photographie, 256.

[21] Boutan, La Photographie.