Photographs are crucial to the structure and historical reception of this book, but an argument can be made that they are relatively neglected. They serve simple functions, principally either to document places, objects, events, and people mentioned in the text, or to provide what Breton called “anti-literary” mystery. There is internal evidence of different sorts that Breton spent only a small amount of time thinking about his illustrations, despite the fact that he revisited the text for the 1963 edition and changed some photographs
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Breton says “I am concerned, I say, with facts which may belong to pure observation, but which on each occasion present all the appearances of a signal, without our being able to say precisely which signal, and of what” (“présentent chaque fois toutes les apparances d’un signal, sans qu’on puisse dire au juste de quel signal,” Gallimard edition p. 20, Howard translation p. 19). When it comes to interpreting the illustrations, that remark asks to be read in two ways, one attending to the expression “pure observation,” and the other to the idea of a signal.
The figure of “pure observation” suggests that illustrations will be “facts,” simply seen, recording places described in the text; as it turns out that means that the illustrations are themselves simply observed, meaning seen in a cursory way, not really pondered. Most of Breton’s photographs are indifferently lit, composed, and framed; some contain people, and some don’t; some show only the shop or café or person described in the text, and others show much more; some bear traces of the time of day or season, others don’t.
The second figure, of the “signal,” suggests that the photographs should also be taken as reminders or indicators of objects, people, and places that are significant but insufficiently explained, interpreted, or contextualized. In the introduction to the 1963 edition Breton says that he intended his photographs to have an “anti-literary” purpose, meaning that he wanted them “d’éliminer toute description.” This is unevenly true of the photographs in the book, because the lack of extended explanation or ekphrasis makes the photographs mysterious; but it is also effectively true of the content and structure of each individual photograph, because it appears Breton did not look closely enough at his photographs to notice the many possibilities for “signals” in their details or compositions.
Toward the end of Nadja, speaking of the book’s composition, he says he went back “to look at several of the places” he had mentioned in the narrative, in order “to provide a photographic image of them taken at the special angle from which I myself had looked at them” (pp. 151-2). This is the first a reader hears about the photographs; in the rest of the book the captions tell readers what passage they illustrate, and nothing in the book refers to the illustrations as photographs rather than as direct representations of places. It is also the only time Breton mentions anything to do with the framing of his photographs. I don’t think it is possible in most cases to guess what the “special angle” might be, and so I doubt the veracity of his comment; it seems more likely that he told Jacques-André Boiffard (the photographer who took the street scenes for Breton) the locations he wanted photographed, but not the angles, or at least not with any precision.