{"id":1641,"date":"2016-11-29T13:56:06","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T13:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/?p=1641"},"modified":"2016-11-29T13:56:06","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T13:56:06","slug":"30-november-2016-research-seminar-on-drowning-in-early-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/2016\/11\/29\/30-november-2016-research-seminar-on-drowning-in-early-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"30 November 2016: Research seminar on drowning in early photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

English & Creative Writing Research Seminar <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0Breathless: the look of drowning in early underwater photography<\/b><\/p>\n

Speaker: Dr Matt Kerr <\/a>(University of Southampton)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a03.30-5pm on\u00a0Wednesday 30th\u00a0<\/sup>November 2016<\/p>\n

in Babbage 406, Plymouth University<\/p>\n

\"Hippolyte<\/a>
Hippolyte Bayard (1801-1887), Self portrait as a drowned man (1840)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This paper investigates the imaginative links between photography and drowning in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If photography can be thought of as an art of surfaces, photographs of drowning are distinguished by their relationship to immersion\u2014to depth.<\/p>\n

I begin with Hippolyte Bayard\u2019s protest picture, Self Portrait as a Drowned Man<\/em> (1840), which showed Bayard, shirtless, in a darkened room, with closed eyes and somewhat blurred hands. The accompanying caption punningly explained the sitter\u2019s \u2018decayed\u2019 state in terms of his obscurity: \u2018He has been at the morgue for several days, and no-one has recognized or claimed him. Ladies and gentlemen, you\u2019d better pass along for fear of offending your sense of smell, for as you can observe, the face and hands of the gentleman are beginning to decay.\u2019<\/p>\n

Why does Bayard adopt the figure of the drowned man to symbolize his plight as a neglected pioneer of photography? What might the relationship be between Bayard\u2019s self-portrait, and aspects of photographic technique that recall drowning (including exposure and immersion)? And how does Bayard\u2019s image reproduce or revise other visions of drowning in the long nineteenth century? This paper considers these questions, among others.<\/p>\n

I will range broadly over literary and visual texts including Thomas De Quincey\u2019s ruminations on drowning, the early underwater photography of Louis Boutan, Dickens\u2019s contemplation of drowned bodies in The Uncommercial Traveller<\/em>, representations of L\u2019Inconnue de la Seine<\/em>, and the scenes of drowning (and drowned bodies in the Paris morgue) in Zola\u2019s Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Raquin<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English & Creative Writing Research Seminar \u00a0Breathless: the look of drowning in early underwater photography Speaker: Dr Matt Kerr (University of Southampton) \u00a03.30-5pm on\u00a0Wednesday 30th\u00a0November 2016 in Babbage 406, Plymouth University This paper investigates the imaginative links between photography and drowning in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If photography can be thought of as… Continue reading 30 November 2016: Research seminar on drowning in early photography<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,137,136],"tags":[257,567,52,423],"class_list":["post-1641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-events-for-plymouth-university-researchers","category-histories-memory-memorialisation","category-marine-cultures","tag-english-and-creative-writing","tag-matt-kerr","tag-photography","tag-research-seminars","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1643,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions\/1643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}