When Louis Daguerre revealed his daguerreotype process to the French Academy of Sciences in 1839, the immediate reaction of the artistic establishment was not one of celebration, but of existential alarm. Painters feared that the camera's ability to capture reality with mechanical precision would render their craft obsolete. However, this anxiety overlooked a fundamental distinction: photography captured the world as it appeared to the lens, whereas painting represented the world as filtered through the human consciousness. In his 1859 review of the Salon, the poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire famously dismissed photography as the 'humble handmaid' of the arts and sciences, warning that if it were permitted to encroach upon the domain of the imaginary, it would soon supplant or corrupt painting entirely.
Which of the following best describes the rhetorical function of the third sentence ('However, this anxiety... human consciousness') in the passage?
- It introduces a conceptual difference that serves to undermine the logic behind the artists' apprehension.Answer
- BIt details the mechanical differences between the camera lens and the human eye.
- CIt transitions the discussion from the history of photography to a summary of Baudelaire's artistic philosophy.
- DIt provides evidence demonstrating that photography did in fact corrupt the traditional style of nineteenth-century painting.