Papers by Claire-Lise Debluë
Histoire et Mesure, 2023
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Culture & Musées, 2022
Exhibiting Social Issues: Museums and “Useful” Knowledge at the Beginning of the 20th Century
Si... more Exhibiting Social Issues: Museums and “Useful” Knowledge at the Beginning of the 20th Century
Since when have social issues been exhibited, and how? Almost a century before the concept of the “museum of society” prevailed, these questions were already at the heart of certain social reformers’ concerns. Wishing to make the museum a place where they could shape their vision for a social world and seeking to express these views through a variety of visual and material means, these reformers can no doubt be considered the precursors of museums of society. By breaking with the tradition of heritage collections exclusively concerned with the past, museums of society were conceived of as “laboratories” in which new ways to shape society and to negotiate its representation could be tried out. This article examines the discourse and practices that surrounded the creation of the first social museums by focusing on the beginning of the 20th century as a crucial period for the formation of new subjectivities. Through the study of the Swiss Social Museum (Zurich, 1917), the article reflects on how new social ideas were communicated, and retraces the (necessarily subjective) uses that shaped their meaning. To this end, this article attempts to shed a new light on the genesis of social museums.
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Revue suisse d'histoire/Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte , 2021
From Peddling to Retail: A Brief History of Displaying Goods in Lausanne (1850–1950)
At the end o... more From Peddling to Retail: A Brief History of Displaying Goods in Lausanne (1850–1950)
At the end of the nineteenth century, sales practices faced dramatic changes. Shifting from the outdoor spaces to the sheltered places of small shops and department stores, the relocation of trade practices deeply impacted the landscape of retail activity. Street hawk-ers and peddlers suffered the consequences of these changes, as local authorities and shopkeepers’ representatives repeatedly attempted to undermine their right to do business in the public sphere. In Lausanne, the Société industrielle et commerciale (SIC) called for more regulation of peddling, both at the cantonal and local levels. The strong and ongo-ing advocacy on behalf of shopkeepers’ interests not only accelerated the quick decline of peddling, but also played a key role in the professionalization of sales management and advertising in the interwar period. As this article shows, the shifting definition of the word «étalage» (display) epitomizes the ongoing changes at play in the retail field of the early twentieth century. While so-called «étalateurs» were often referred to as dis-reputable people or «second class» sellers, the rise of scientific management witnessed an important shift in the practices of selling, advertising and displaying goods. In the inter-war period, retailers’ representatives, such as the SIC, actively promoted the «art of dis-play» (étalagisme) as a key factor for economic success. By offering training courses, they fostered the dissemination of «best practices» among retailers, and supported the expan-sion of graphic and exhibition design into the business field. Taking a long-term per-spective, this paper shows the instrumental role of shopkeepers’ representatives in devel-oping the practices of exhibition and in shaping their networks. It argues that the spaces for exchanging commodities are key to understanding the radical transformations of sales and consumption practices at the turn of the twentieth century.
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Transbordeur. Photographie, histoire, société, 2018
From the “Numerical Image” to Photography. Displaying statistical knowledge in the late 19th and ... more From the “Numerical Image” to Photography. Displaying statistical knowledge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Over the last twenty years graphic visualisation has become a core tool for observation, analysis and communication in the field of data science. Far from being a purely contemporary phenomenon linked to the rise of digital cultures and humanities, the development of techniques of data visualisation was at the heart of a vast movement of reconfiguration of scientific and technical bodies of knowledge that began burgeoning as long ago as the 1870s. This article explores the influence of statistical thinking in the visual culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with particular emphasis on the importance of the photographic model in the scholarly discourses guiding the application of the “graphic method” to statistics. It looks afresh at one of the main epistemological and technical issues raised by this kind of project: the “material expression of abstractions”. The article thus shows to what extent statistics in its visual forms and the repeated attempts to popularise its uses – via graphical charts, wall diagrams and statistical relief diagrams – were closely modelled on other reproducible visual media, including photography, typography and graphic design.
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Transbordeur. Photographie, histoire, société, 2018
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Revue d'Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande, 2017
L’année 1917 se signale par l’organisation d’une campagne de propagande patriote et économique de... more L’année 1917 se signale par l’organisation d’une campagne de propagande patriote et économique de grande envergure prenant pour cible la « concurrence étrangère ». Directement issue du régime de l’économie de guerre, la Semaine suisse (Schweizer Woche) s’invite dans les écoles, auprès des soldats mobilisés et dans les foyers. Mais elle se déploie surtout dans les vitrines des détaillants, dont les aménagements célèbrent les produits de fabrication helvétique. Dans un contexte marqué par les difficultés d’approvisionnement et l’inflation persistante, la manifestation a non seulement pour vocation d’éduquer les consommateurs, mais aussi d’infléchir les représentations de l’économie dans l’espace public. Resituée dans une perspective transnationale, cette étude de cas s’interroge sur la popularisation des savoirs économiques en temps de guerre. Elle montre notamment qu’au terme du long xixe siècle qui fut le témoin de l’institutionnalisation et de la professionnalisation de l’économie, la rue s’imposa comme un lieu privilégié de diffusion et d’acquisition des connaissances durant la Première Guerre mondiale.
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Relations internationales, 2015
From World Fair to National Trade Fair. Key Elements to an Expanded History of Exhibitions during... more From World Fair to National Trade Fair. Key Elements to an Expanded History of Exhibitions during World War I During World War I, trade fairs outnumbered world fairs. With the support of Chambers of commerce, trade fairs enlarged the prerogatives of private economic actors in the field of exhibitions. In this article, it is argued that the emergence of a trade fair pattern must be considered as a transnational phenomenon. Not only will the perspective of transnational exhibition politics concerns be underlined, but also the consequences of the war economy on it. In this perspective, this article will first look back on the main reasons which led to the decline of the world fair pattern on the eve of WWI. Secondly, this article will discuss why trade fairs have been considered as a key part of the renewing and “rationalizing” of commercial selling methods. Finally, we will discuss how they contributed to redefine and professionalize exhibition practices during the interwar period.
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Books by Claire-Lise Debluë
Durant la première moitié du XX e siècle, les expositions et les foires internationales constitue... more Durant la première moitié du XX e siècle, les expositions et les foires internationales constituent un terrain d'affrontement privilégié entre les différents acteurs de la politique d'exposition. Alors que les entreprises suisses cherchent à conquérir de nouvelles positions sur les marchés extérieurs, la manière de représenter la Suisse à l'étranger fait particulièrement débat. Aux traditionnelles constructions régionalistes se substituent des aménagements aux lignes épurées, conçus selon les principes fonctionnalistes de la « construction nouvelle ». Désigné dès le milieu des années 1930 sous le terme de « style suisse », ce nouveau visage de l'architecture d'exposition, simple et rationnel, rompt avec le vocabulaire formel du « style chalet », si souvent privilégié dans les expositions universelles du tournant du XX e siècle. Loin de constituer un phénomène isolé, ces reconfigurations témoignent d'un mouvement plus large de rationalisation de l'organisation commerciale. Dans le sillage de la Première Guerre mondiale, des publications spécialisées aux foires modernes, l'efficience visuelle devient en effet un instrument incontournable de la « lutte pour les débouchés » commerciaux. La genèse du « style suisse » d'exposition, conçue comme le fruit d'une collaboration étroite entre les acteurs de l'expansion commerciale et du mouvement de l'architecture moderne, est au coeur du présent ouvrage. Au-delà d'une histoire purement institutionnelle, ce livre apporte un éclairage inédit sur les enjeux économiques et artistiques de la politique d'exposition. Il prête une attention particulière au rôle de certains « passeurs » dans la formulation et la diffusion d'une culture visuelle de l'action commerciale. Claire-Lise Debluë a étudié l'histoire du cinéma, l'histoire et le français à l'Université de Lausanne (UNIL), puis, dès 2008, a travaillé en tant qu'assistante à la Faculté des lettres. Elle est actuellement chercheuse post-doctorante au sein du Centre des sciences historiques de la culture de l'UNIL pour le projet « Photographie et exposition en Suisse, 1920-1970 ». Cet ouvrage interdisciplinaire est issu de sa thèse, soutenue en 2014.
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Talks by Claire-Lise Debluë
Today, data visualisation is often referred to as ubiquitous. Visual computing tools enable quant... more Today, data visualisation is often referred to as ubiquitous. Visual computing tools enable quantitative information to be easily turned into images, increasing their capacity to reach a mass audience through an extensive range of media. Long before the rise of information graphics, the widespread use of so-called “statistical images” was already firmly acknowledged. During the first half of the 20th century, graphical statistics indeed became a core feature of visual modernity. The rise of mass media was instrumental in this process, enhancing the reproducible nature of visual representations of data.
Despite this apparent success story of early data visualisation, the increasing numbers of statistical displays circulating in the public sphere raised critical challenges. For most of the early advocates of visual statistics, turning abstract data into material expression (either through two or three-dimensional objects) had become a deep and permanent concern. Statistical data indeed were not purely abstract. They were – and still are – firmly entangled in material and technological dispositives such as printed material, exhibition displays, films or slideshows predating the first generation of computer-generated images in the 1950s.
How did the material expressions of data affect the visual forms of statistical knowledge? How did the reproducible nature of graphical statistics impact the spaces and spatiality of statistics? Taking a long-term perspective, this talk challenges the idea that history of data visualization should be first and foremost a visual history. Focusing on the materiality and spatiality of statistical displays, it will investigate new connections between media archaeology, history of statistics and material culture and will thus shed a new light on contemporary debates on the dissemination of quantitative information in the era of “data deluge”.
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Call for Communication by Claire-Lise Debluë
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Book Chapters by Claire-Lise Debluë
Book Chapter
in Olivier Lugon (dir.), Exposition et médias: photographie, cinéma, télévision, Lausanne, L'Âge ... more in Olivier Lugon (dir.), Exposition et médias: photographie, cinéma, télévision, Lausanne, L'Âge d'Homme, 2012, pp. 201-222.
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Book Chapters, 2014
in Olivier Lugon, François Vallotton (dir.), Revisiter l'Expo 64. Acteurs, discours, controverses... more in Olivier Lugon, François Vallotton (dir.), Revisiter l'Expo 64. Acteurs, discours, controverses, Lausanne, PPUR, 2014, pp. 86-105.
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Lausanne – Banques, commerces et bureaux, 2021
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Special Issues by Claire-Lise Debluë
Après le numéro inaugural de Transbordeur sur l’histoire des musées de photographies documentaire... more Après le numéro inaugural de Transbordeur sur l’histoire des musées de photographies documentaires, le présent numéro poursuit la démarche d’une histoire matérielle de la photographie, de ses usages et des formes de sa diffusion. Le dossier, au cœur de la revue, croise différents fils autour de la question de l’exposition de la photographie : la célébration du médium lui-même, depuis la divulgation du daguerréotype jusqu’aux premières présentations de la photographie numérique, en passant par la mise en scène de son histoire ; la photographie comme pédagogie par l’image, avec la statistique visuelle, l’astronomie savamment organisée par Aby Warburg, ou encore l’exposition de la Grèce par Fred Boissonnas au lendemain de la Grande Guerre. Les exhibitions d’architecture ou les expositions itinérantes du plan Marshall nous le montrent par ailleurs, la modernité de l’exposition par la photographie c’est de n’être plus ni temple ni sanctuaire, mais de circuler d’un lieu à un autre, d’un dispositif à l’autre. Et la photographie est encore là pour partager l’expérience de l’exposition au-delà des frontières et à travers le temps : les photographies stéréoscopiques prises à l’Exposition universelle de 1867 restituèrent aux millions de regardeurs l’immense bazar où le monde entier avait envoyé ses produits, tandis que des décennies de vues d’expositions artistiques sont aujourd’hui réinterrogées par des artistes, des commissaires et des chercheurs. Dans le Japon des années 1960-1970, auquel plusieurs textes de ce numéro sont consacrés, exposition et photographie ont poussé à l’extrême les utopies post-industrielles dans le sens d’une critique du médium photographique. Lorsque le dispositif se fait discours, que l’image se fait utopie, elle ouvre un nouveau champ des possibles aux multitudes rassemblées. Exposer, en définitive, c’est construire des publics. Ce deuxième numéro de Transbordeur regroupe une quinzaine d’articles composant un volume de 256 pages richement illustré. Il est divisé en quatre sections : un dossier thématique – Photographie et exposition – regroupant dix études ; une section « collections » où sont décrits et analysés succinctement des fonds photographiques ; une sélection d’articles libres (varia), faisant une large place aux traductions de textes de chercheurs internationaux ; une section « lectures », consacrée à des comptes rendus d’ouvrages.
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Conference by Claire-Lise Debluë
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One-day Conference
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Book Reviews by Claire-Lise Debluë
Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte/Revue suisse d'histoire, 2022
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Uploads
Papers by Claire-Lise Debluë
Since when have social issues been exhibited, and how? Almost a century before the concept of the “museum of society” prevailed, these questions were already at the heart of certain social reformers’ concerns. Wishing to make the museum a place where they could shape their vision for a social world and seeking to express these views through a variety of visual and material means, these reformers can no doubt be considered the precursors of museums of society. By breaking with the tradition of heritage collections exclusively concerned with the past, museums of society were conceived of as “laboratories” in which new ways to shape society and to negotiate its representation could be tried out. This article examines the discourse and practices that surrounded the creation of the first social museums by focusing on the beginning of the 20th century as a crucial period for the formation of new subjectivities. Through the study of the Swiss Social Museum (Zurich, 1917), the article reflects on how new social ideas were communicated, and retraces the (necessarily subjective) uses that shaped their meaning. To this end, this article attempts to shed a new light on the genesis of social museums.
At the end of the nineteenth century, sales practices faced dramatic changes. Shifting from the outdoor spaces to the sheltered places of small shops and department stores, the relocation of trade practices deeply impacted the landscape of retail activity. Street hawk-ers and peddlers suffered the consequences of these changes, as local authorities and shopkeepers’ representatives repeatedly attempted to undermine their right to do business in the public sphere. In Lausanne, the Société industrielle et commerciale (SIC) called for more regulation of peddling, both at the cantonal and local levels. The strong and ongo-ing advocacy on behalf of shopkeepers’ interests not only accelerated the quick decline of peddling, but also played a key role in the professionalization of sales management and advertising in the interwar period. As this article shows, the shifting definition of the word «étalage» (display) epitomizes the ongoing changes at play in the retail field of the early twentieth century. While so-called «étalateurs» were often referred to as dis-reputable people or «second class» sellers, the rise of scientific management witnessed an important shift in the practices of selling, advertising and displaying goods. In the inter-war period, retailers’ representatives, such as the SIC, actively promoted the «art of dis-play» (étalagisme) as a key factor for economic success. By offering training courses, they fostered the dissemination of «best practices» among retailers, and supported the expan-sion of graphic and exhibition design into the business field. Taking a long-term per-spective, this paper shows the instrumental role of shopkeepers’ representatives in devel-oping the practices of exhibition and in shaping their networks. It argues that the spaces for exchanging commodities are key to understanding the radical transformations of sales and consumption practices at the turn of the twentieth century.
Books by Claire-Lise Debluë
Talks by Claire-Lise Debluë
Despite this apparent success story of early data visualisation, the increasing numbers of statistical displays circulating in the public sphere raised critical challenges. For most of the early advocates of visual statistics, turning abstract data into material expression (either through two or three-dimensional objects) had become a deep and permanent concern. Statistical data indeed were not purely abstract. They were – and still are – firmly entangled in material and technological dispositives such as printed material, exhibition displays, films or slideshows predating the first generation of computer-generated images in the 1950s.
How did the material expressions of data affect the visual forms of statistical knowledge? How did the reproducible nature of graphical statistics impact the spaces and spatiality of statistics? Taking a long-term perspective, this talk challenges the idea that history of data visualization should be first and foremost a visual history. Focusing on the materiality and spatiality of statistical displays, it will investigate new connections between media archaeology, history of statistics and material culture and will thus shed a new light on contemporary debates on the dissemination of quantitative information in the era of “data deluge”.
Call for Communication by Claire-Lise Debluë
Book Chapters by Claire-Lise Debluë
Special Issues by Claire-Lise Debluë
Conference by Claire-Lise Debluë
Book Reviews by Claire-Lise Debluë
Since when have social issues been exhibited, and how? Almost a century before the concept of the “museum of society” prevailed, these questions were already at the heart of certain social reformers’ concerns. Wishing to make the museum a place where they could shape their vision for a social world and seeking to express these views through a variety of visual and material means, these reformers can no doubt be considered the precursors of museums of society. By breaking with the tradition of heritage collections exclusively concerned with the past, museums of society were conceived of as “laboratories” in which new ways to shape society and to negotiate its representation could be tried out. This article examines the discourse and practices that surrounded the creation of the first social museums by focusing on the beginning of the 20th century as a crucial period for the formation of new subjectivities. Through the study of the Swiss Social Museum (Zurich, 1917), the article reflects on how new social ideas were communicated, and retraces the (necessarily subjective) uses that shaped their meaning. To this end, this article attempts to shed a new light on the genesis of social museums.
At the end of the nineteenth century, sales practices faced dramatic changes. Shifting from the outdoor spaces to the sheltered places of small shops and department stores, the relocation of trade practices deeply impacted the landscape of retail activity. Street hawk-ers and peddlers suffered the consequences of these changes, as local authorities and shopkeepers’ representatives repeatedly attempted to undermine their right to do business in the public sphere. In Lausanne, the Société industrielle et commerciale (SIC) called for more regulation of peddling, both at the cantonal and local levels. The strong and ongo-ing advocacy on behalf of shopkeepers’ interests not only accelerated the quick decline of peddling, but also played a key role in the professionalization of sales management and advertising in the interwar period. As this article shows, the shifting definition of the word «étalage» (display) epitomizes the ongoing changes at play in the retail field of the early twentieth century. While so-called «étalateurs» were often referred to as dis-reputable people or «second class» sellers, the rise of scientific management witnessed an important shift in the practices of selling, advertising and displaying goods. In the inter-war period, retailers’ representatives, such as the SIC, actively promoted the «art of dis-play» (étalagisme) as a key factor for economic success. By offering training courses, they fostered the dissemination of «best practices» among retailers, and supported the expan-sion of graphic and exhibition design into the business field. Taking a long-term per-spective, this paper shows the instrumental role of shopkeepers’ representatives in devel-oping the practices of exhibition and in shaping their networks. It argues that the spaces for exchanging commodities are key to understanding the radical transformations of sales and consumption practices at the turn of the twentieth century.
Despite this apparent success story of early data visualisation, the increasing numbers of statistical displays circulating in the public sphere raised critical challenges. For most of the early advocates of visual statistics, turning abstract data into material expression (either through two or three-dimensional objects) had become a deep and permanent concern. Statistical data indeed were not purely abstract. They were – and still are – firmly entangled in material and technological dispositives such as printed material, exhibition displays, films or slideshows predating the first generation of computer-generated images in the 1950s.
How did the material expressions of data affect the visual forms of statistical knowledge? How did the reproducible nature of graphical statistics impact the spaces and spatiality of statistics? Taking a long-term perspective, this talk challenges the idea that history of data visualization should be first and foremost a visual history. Focusing on the materiality and spatiality of statistical displays, it will investigate new connections between media archaeology, history of statistics and material culture and will thus shed a new light on contemporary debates on the dissemination of quantitative information in the era of “data deluge”.