Baudelaire mocked most of the titles of the painting exhibition, which he found ridiculous, and all too often a matter of the picturesque or the anecdotal; these were the main symptom of a real crisis in representation. While he agrees with Edgar Poe's aesthetic theory of astonishment, Baudelaire is outspoken in his condemnation of these titles' overt desire to amaze and astonish, rather than to inspire the viewer to dream. So it's not photography that Baudelaire is attacking at first glance; rather, he's putting the public on trial for refusing to be amazed.
Basically, Baudelaire is opposed to photography, which he sees as the culmination and cause of the contemporary degradation of art. He has three grievances. The first is technical: photography literally copies reality (the object impresses the sensitive plate), confusing the public (and artists) between the exact representation of reality and art; the second is commercial, mercantile: in twenty years, photography has become an industry and the photographic image an object of consumption on the boulevards; the third is social or political: photography, which is confused with democracy, is transforming society. Combining these three factors, photography brings about a moral and even metaphysical revolution, or is the best indicator of it.
In the poet's eyes, photography calls for moral and theological decadence. Traces of the divine are being erased by this new golden calf. The advent of this art form signals the end of monotheism in favor of a new religion, whose credo Baudelaire enunciates: the photographer replaces God, in that he writes with the sun; "Daguerre is his messiah". But behind Daguerre, Baudelaire takes aim at his friend Nadar.
In fact, Baudelaire's arguments against photography are hardly new (even in metaphysical criticism, as the comparison with deicide is frequent), notably when he describes the photographer as a failed painter (a cliché that's in the air at the moment). He also denounces the erotic or pornographic use of photography, deeming it "obscene". We find similar arguments in La Revue des deux mondes, written by his enemy Gustave Planche, and in Le Figaro.
Press, photography and printing are the great vectors of social decadence. Baudelaire asked that photography remain a mere auxiliary technique, content with a subordinate, documentary role, and that it remain "the servant of the sciences and the arts [...], the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand, which have neither created nor supplanted literature", but that it not spill over into art.
These considerations on photography lead us to a different reading of Le Rêve d'un curieux, the penultimate poem in Les Fleurs du Mal. The poem is dedicated to Nadar, but as always, the dedication is ambiguous. It's a poisoned gift. Éric Darragon has proposed a judicious comparison of this poem with photography; the experience of death is described as that of waiting before a show, and can be likened to waiting in front of a darkroom.
