Abstract

When François Arago presented the daguerreotype to the French public in 1839, he established a paradigm of the photograph as an objective trace of reality, produced directly by nature itself. This conception still permeates the digital age, where retouching is frequently criticised for undermining the documentary value of the image. Yet photographic manipulation emerged alongside the medium itself in the 19th century. This article argues, through a focused corpus, that the use of photomontage and retouching in the mid-19th century did not necessarily stem from an intent to deceive — but, on the contrary, from the need to compensate for the apparatus's inherent limitations in order to produce the most "transparent" image possible. Drawing on the works of Gustave Le Gray (Marines, 1856–1857), Édouard Baldus (Cloître Saint-Trophime, 1851; Maison carrée à Nîmes, 1853) and André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (Cour Impériale de Napoléon III, c. 1866), and engaging with the curatorial work of Mia Fineman and the architectural historiography of Barry Bergdoll, this study proposes a historical and critical approach to early photographic retouching. It demonstrates how manipulation could serve to clarify, reinforce, or render more faithful the testimony of the real — sometimes making the "manipulated" image paradoxically truer than the unaltered one. Far from a mere falsification, photomontage and retouching are revealed as constitutive acts of photographic image-making, inviting a critical gaze attentive not only to what is represented, but to the entire process of image production.

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Keywords: Photomontage; 19th Century; Photographic Retouching; History of Photography; Visual Culture; Documentary Image