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ZOLA, EMILE
ZOLA, EMILE (1840–1902)
“In my view you cannot claim to have seen something
until you have photographed it.” This is a rather curious
sentiment, since it came from its author, Emile Zola,
after most of his incredible writing career, which was
largely based on good old-fashioned visits, conversa-
tions, and note-taking, was over. Zola was virtually a
writing machine who became famous by turning out
mostly great and in any case best-selling novels at the
rate of more than one per year for more than 30 years.
He wrote many of them for serialization, keeping just
ahead of their journal publication, and then they were
published as books. The biggest project was Les Rou-
gon-Macquart, a more than 20 volume set of familial
and social disasters that ran from 1871-93. He novel-
ized the urbanization and modernization of France. He
also wrote many journal articles, essays, criticism, and
plays. A number of his books were successfully put on
stage.
Zola became friends with Cezanne as a youth, with
many of the Impressionists, and with Nadar (Felix
Tournachon), Petit, Carjat, and other photographers in
the 1860s. Nadar took many portraits of him between
1876 and 1898. Zola apparently took up photography
on a particular trip in 1888, but did not start taking pho-
tographs seriously until 1894, and took perhaps 5000
images up to his murder in 1902. He was passionate
about photography in writing and in speaking. He col-
lected about a dozen cameras, including large and small
formats, stereo and panoramic equipment. He did his
own darkroom work, from mixing his photochemistry to
enlarging and printing. His subjects included portraits,
mostly of his family, especially his paramour and their
children; his wife; some friends, and then landscapes,
railroad scenes, street scenes in Paris and London, and
the Paris World’s Fair of 1900. He considered himself a
member of the naturalist (or realist) school in his writing,
and that is refl ected in his photographic compositions.
One of his best photos of Paris, of Place Prosper-Gou-
baux on a rainy day, shows from its camera angle,
mistiness, shadows, carriages, pedestrians and buildings
strong similarity to Caillebotte’s famous painting, Rue
de Paris, temps de pluie (Paris street in Rainy Weather,
1877). It is extremely likely Zola had seen the painting
and knew Caillebotte.
Zola also publicly and famously defended Capt.
Alfred Dreyfus after he was unjustly and falsely ac-
cused of treason. In 1898 Zola wrote a front page open
letter to the French President in the Paris newspaper
L’aurore, under the banner “J’accuse...!” that ripped
apart the Army’s case. Zola was tried and convicted of
slandering the Army, and fl ed to exile in England for
11 months, where he continued to photograph. Zola
returned in 1899. Dreyfus was tried and convicted again,
but almost immediately pardoned by the President
and reinstated by the Army. In the 1920s a stove fi tter
confessed on his death bed to stuffi ng the chimney of
Zola’s country house one night. Carbon monoxide killed
him in his sleep.
William R. AlschulerFurther Reading
Brown, F., Zola, a Life, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1995.
Emile-Zola, E., and Massin, Zola Photographer, New York:
Seaver/Henry Holt, 1988.
Massin and Emile-Zola, F., Zola Photographe, Paris: Musee-
Galerie de la Seita, 1987 (this and the above title are closely
related, from a particular exhibition, but the text and pictures
only overlap and the quality of reproduction differs).