Autobiographie photographique de Leon Mehedin.

Méhédin, trained as an architect, photographed for only a decade
(1855-1864). It was then that he put together an album, without
any intention of publishing it. The album ""Souvenirs'' is
composed of calotypes and portrait cartes, mounted and
captioned. His text reveals his utter allegiance to the ideology
of the Empire and his devotion to the Emperor. At the same time
one can read a certain bitterness and failed ambition there. The
very number of his missions shows a certain official reticence
to support him to the end. They also point to the ideological
pretentions of the Second Empire. They had the added effect of
making Méhédin an ideologue in spite of hiimself. His preference
for panoramas testifies to a desire ""to apply photography to
History'' while proposing te make a ""Gallery of the History of
the Reign''. The autobiographical contract set up in his
""Souvenirs'' is fairly singular: it collects the documents of
his work (architecture, photographic missions, historic
meetings, wordly connections) and other evidence (official
titles, letters) that provide a rather more social than
existential sense of the author's destiny. Rarely does one
encounter photographic albums like this one, where photography
is allowed all of its functions, documentary, technical,
commemorative, creative, professional, personal, broadly social.
All contribute to a rhetoric of persuasion at the service of
M.'s narrative imperative. (Abridged Authors Abstract) (French)