L’environnement subaquatique au prisme de l’aquarium

• Published in: Images Re-Vues
• Main Author: Quentin Montagne
• Format: Article
• Language: French
• Published: Centre d´Histoire et Théorie des Arts 2021-06-01
• Subjects: landscape; Aquariums; garden; animals; diving; Benoît de Maillet
• Online Access: https://journals.openedition.org/imagesrevues/11603

How do we understand the underwater environment? At a time of ever-increasing sophistication in the techniques of photography, the growing popularity of amateur diving and the regular broadcasting of underwater images and documentaries, the spectacle of worlds beneath the surface has almost become a leitmotiv. The views of aquaculture bottoms are now usual, common, standardised and marked out. They apparently no longer offer any real surprises to the public. Yet this environment has only recently been revealed. With the exception of a few stories, such as the medieval legend of Alexander the Great or the Telliamed by Benoît de Maillet in 1748, it has remained unknown for a long time and, even more surprisingly, unimagined. Although fish, shellfish and cetaceans have been seriously studied since Antiquity, the question of their natural environment was virtually ignored until the 19th century. It was not until then that mankind really began to unravel the mysteries that lurk beneath the waves, whether in the oceans or in freshwater rivers. Oceanographic expeditions, the development of marine biology, the development of heavy-duty diving suits and the geography of the seabed marked this century, feeding the imagination of the time as witnessed by the adventures of Jules Verne and Conan Doyle. The invention of the aquatic world, in the archaeological sense of the term, did not arise from direct exploration by divers, whether scientists or amateurs. It comes from a device that is as much science as art: the aquarium. Developed in 1850, and preceding Louis Boutan's first underwater photographs about fifty years ago, this tank remained the main means of perceiving sunken areas for almost a century. This article has no other objective than to address the role of the aquarium in our relationship to these territories. As an original model, a true schema of the underwater world, the aquarium leaves its mark on the representations and reconstructions that are made of it, as much as on the way we see and appreciate it in person. Far from being replaced by other media such as photography or television, its influence is still obvious today, even in the recognition of an "underwater landscape", a highly problematic notion.