In Baudelaire's eyes, photography represents the model of modern sensibility, and therefore of decadence. But, as with the press, the poet's reticence towards photography is accompanied by an addiction.
Mallarmé and Rimbaud's comparison of the prose poem to the daguerreotype quickly became a cliché. The comparison with the daguerreotype is intended above all to denounce a faithful, or too-faithful, image of reality. Baudelaire accepts dioramas and panoramas more readily, as he finds them less mimetic of reality; photography is deceptive. L'Irréparable and Rêve d'un curieux contain allusions to photography; the latter is dedicated to Nadar and features the spectacle of impossible death. Baudelaire's era was one of transition, between the Romantic fashion for optical spectacles and the advent of photography. 1839-1859: the turning point came between these dates. In the space of twenty years, photography came of age. It was the time of litho and photography. From one to the other, we find - and relive - the equivalent of a new Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. In a famous dream of Baudelaire's, studied by Michel Butor and more recently by Roberto Calasso, the poet sees "drawings, miniatures and photographic prints" in a "great house of prostitution"; the account of this dream reflects Baudelaire's ambivalence towards the fashion for etching and photography. In this dream, ancient and modern, litho and photography, coexist. We find this same idea in Mademoiselle Bistouri, whose heroine collects portraits of doctors: she has lithographs for the oldest - the mandarins - and photos for the interns and externs.
In the Salon of 1859, Baudelaire nonetheless delivers a veritable trial of photography ("Le public moderne et la photographie"), although it is difficult to separate this text from its context: the complicated relationship between Baudelaire and Nadar. Baudelaire's relationship with photography is in part Baudelaire's relationship with Nadar. This text can therefore be read above all as a betrayal of the photographer, his friend.
