Birth of Venus Emerging from the Waves

Rodin had no qualms about tampering with photographs. Here, he added pencil and gouache drawing to an assemblage he entitled Birth of Venus Emerging from the Waves. Such alterations were often more than mere indications intended to change a detail or improve a form; instead, they became independent drawings, superimposed on the photographic image. The mechanical medium of photography and the manual medium of drawing combined to create a work of art in its own right.

These hybrid works may have been the reaction of a man attached to a certain idea of artistic creation at a time when it was becoming increasingly machine-assisted, particularly in the field of the decorative arts. Rodin thus appropriated photography, incorporating its cold precision into his world by transforming it into a creative medium of his own.