Inventing the Literary Prehistory of Photography: From François Arago to Helmut Gernsheim

摘要

This paper provides an overview of a trend in photo-history that has, from 1839 to the late twentieth century, sought to uncover, or indeed to invent, literary ‘premonitions’ of the invention of photography. The paper focuses primarily on two historians of photography, François Arago and Helmut Gernsheim. The production of a ‘literary’ prehistory of photography is interpreted as denoting a wish to counterbalance its association with science.