Traces of History: Hippolyte Bayard’s Photographs of the 1848 Revolution

Abstract

The aims of this study of four photographs by Hippolyte Bayard that were taken in Paris between 1848 and 1850 are twofold. One objective is to provide the historical details necessary to understand the ways in which the images engaged with events of the 1848 Revolution. The other is to bring attention to how photography’s contribution to the historical record differs from that of other visual media such as paintings, prints, and drawings. The fact that the photograph denoted a temporal specificity put Bayard in the unique position of being able to evince the transitional and ephemeral nature of the 1848 Revolution that so many of his contemporaries remarked upon.