We tell you the story of this fake photo of Arthur Rimbaud that arouses emotion

You are often told in these columns of deceptions, of diverted images, of bladders which are made to pass for lanterns. This is the lawsuit sent by some Internet users to Luc Loiseau, an artist also known as MoonCCat. What do they blame him for? For creating a fake realistic photo of Arthur Rimbaud and sharing it on his Facebook profile and in a Facebook group of Rimbaud poetry lovers. However, the artist has always warned that it was a creation.

In the sepia-toned image, we see a thin young man, his hands tucked into a frock coat, who is looking straight at the lens. Behind him, a cobbled street, a few buildings. On closer inspection, the young man’s face is familiar. It is indeed the one that we see in the famous, and authentic this time, portrait of Etienne Carjat, who had photographed the poet of Charleville-Mézières, in 1871, when Arthur Rimbaud was 17 years old.

It is true that when he posted his photo in the “rimbaldomanes” Facebook group on June 7, Luc Loiseau began the accompanying text as follows: “Rare photo of Arthur Rimbaud taken by Ernest Balthazar, a street photographer, in Paris on November 1, 1873”. He then describes the unfolding of this day, but concludes by removing any ambiguity on the photo: “This is how this sad day of November 1, 1873 could have unfolded if Rimbaud had indeed crossed paths with Ernest Balthazar. So I helped the legend a little, readjusted fate, arranged the Dream, by creating an image that was probably not so far from the reality of a very monotonous day. »

We are on the Internet, and, let’s face it, the source of an image, as well as the necessary insights that accompany it, are lost in a few clicks. The artistic exercise of Luc Loiseau knows this fate. From reshare to reshare, in just a few days, the photo comes to be presented as authentic, misleading the Internet users who see it. “A photo that is more than a century old, Arthur Rimbaud’s gaze so current and hypnotic”, writes a man on Facebook, touched by the image.

And who wouldn’t? We have so few photos of this man, who gave up poetry before his majority, set at the time at 21, that a new one of such high quality would be an event. There are less than a dozen identified photos of Arthur Rimbaud to date, reminds 20 minutes Carole Marquet-Morelle. The director of the Arthur Rimbaud museum in Charleville-Mézières is rather amused by Luc Loiseau’s initiative: “Rimbaud said that you have to be absolutely modern, that’s a modern approach. This specialist herself was initially struck by the image she discovered in the Rimbaldiens Facebook group: “I imagined that it was a current photographer who had asked a young man to pose. Then, she “took the time” to read the accompanying caption, thus discovering the artistic approach.

In the Facebook group, the image caused a stir. Singer CharlÉlie Couture criticized Luc Loiseau for having used “the same subject” and “the same approach” as a series of paintings he made of Rimbaud. CharlÉlie Couture however imagined the poet in current scenes, which is not the same theme. “I confine myself to [Arthur Rimabud] stage in authenticated scenes of his life, sourced as a director would undoubtedly do, replied Luc Loiseau. His life is so rich, so crazy, and so poorly documented graphically that the iconographic lack ends up being unbearable when you really love his poetry. A lack that leaves room for creation, whether pictorial or digital. As a final nod to this debate on authenticity, it is very likely that Etienne Carjat retouched the portrait he took of Arthur Rimbaud in 1871. In 2023, would he have used Midjourney?

Mathilde Cousin