Les lectures de l'invisible: Notes sur les applications scientifiques de la photographie à la fin du 19e siècle.

In the 19th century scientific photography was less complete in
its pedagogical capacity than it was in its fiction creating
side. Going beyond the level of simple reproduction of the
apparent, scientists set out to explore the invisible armed with
strict or textbook technical procedures which marked the return
of a way of reading images where, thanks to photography, they
purported to have substituted mere demonstration with a new form
of interpretation. Whether it be astronomical or aerial
photography with spiritualist, physiological, legal or
psychiatric applications, fiction takes over in the image with
imagination or language games such as analogies,
schematizations, polysemy, story telling and theatricalizations.
What is revealed by the experiments of Charcot, Marey, Bertillon
and Baraduc, precisely shows the side of photography which
eludes any kind of scientifics: the implacable side of
photography. (published abstract, French)