There’s always this superimposition of reality versus the image. Above is an example of Hippolyte Bayard’s Self Portrait as a Drowned Man in 1840.

 

Bayard was a French photographer and pioneer in the history of photography. He was persuaded to postpone announcing his process to the French Academy of Sciences by François Arago, a friend of Louis Daguerre, who invented the rival daguerreotype process. Arago's conflict of interest cost Bayard the recognition as one of the principal inventors of photography. As a sign of protest against the rejection of his invention, he staged his own suicide. In this image below he was leaning towards the right, pretends to have committed suicide.

 

He was the first person who constructed the first known fictional photograph. Bayard explored artistic possibilities using photographic medium and it has send out so many types of messages just through this one impactful image- it talked about history, self, death, text and image, protest etc. This image also discussed about what reality truly is, easily manipulated by pretending to be something else when it wasn’t the case.

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