An Image mise en abyme
The accompanying photograph, taken early one morning in February 1934, is associated with the making of a film about the Renault Motor Company. A section of assembly line is illuminated by huge spotlights that throw the rest of the cold work area into deep shadow. Three activities are under way: a team of workers is acting, a film crew is shooting or preparing for a shot, and—out of sight—a photographer is taking this photograph. The creation of this image was divorced from the activities it depicts; despite that, what can it tell us about picture taking, film shooting, and industrial work?
The image is certainly atmospheric, but it has limited historical value when viewed alone. However, when seen as part of a network of associated documents, it becomes more useful. One approach is to compare it to a corpus of related documents. Like any other historical vestige, images have to be interpreted in relation, one to another, as well as compared to other sources: they have to be (re)contextualized. A second approach is to investigate archival origins: a picture is always one piece of a photographic coverage; a film is a specific editing of selected rushes, etc. Returning as far as possible to the source of an image, one can identify at least the logic of its conservation, and perhaps eventually the process of its making and the context of its usage. Thus images can become irreplaceable historical documents.
The Hints of a Working Situation
The image captures a staged work scene set up on a working section of a Renault factory conveyor. Based on a few clues in the picture—along with other photographic documentation—the location can be identified as the middle of the final body assembly line, “Workshop 147,” set up since 1930 in the new “Building no. 3” at the Seguin Island plant.
The image reveals details that would be invisible in the motion picture. For example, it shows that the conveyor is a relatively simple device—two U-rails, mounted eight inches above the floor, to guide the automobiles on their actual wheels. Other plans and pictures reveal that the cars were hauled from left to right by hooks connected to an endless chain running between the rails and returning under the floor. At least four men are working on the car in the center, one of them seated on a wheeled stool that allows him to roll at the same rate as the assembly line; his movements are the principal subject of the scene being shot.
Still picture of the shooting of L’Automobile de France, a documentary released in October 1934. To accompany the film, twenty-seven photographs were made by Renault’s photographic department in February 1934. (Photo reproduced courtesy of Renault Communication/DR.)
Two Prima4s,1 left and center, are in the queue. Workers are installing a trunk, but as yet the vehicle has no hood; its seats have been placed on the roof to avoid damage from workers at subsequent stations as they complete the car’s interior. The fenders are shrouded with protective covers for the same reason. Interestingly, this car has been preceded by a larger and less complete vehicle. Its presence is evidence that Renault’s assembly line was able to accommodate the assembly of a variety of car models. In 1934, this assembly line finished 19,708 Mona4 and Celta4 (8 horsepower) cars, plus 16,445 Prima4 and Viva4 (11 horsepower) units—Renault’s basic four-cylinder models. Four years earlier this then-new conveyor was host to mostly six-cylinder Mona6 and MonaStella cars. The worsening economic situation in America, and a little later in France, had prompted Renault to gradually shift to the production of more economical cars, using the same type of bodies. In 1930 some 18,170 MonaStella cars were assembled, along with 14,867 Prima4 and Viva4 models. The following year, only 2,820 Mona6 and MonaStella cars were produced, while 27,418 Mona4, Prima4, and Viva4 models took their place on this assembly line. In 1932 production dropped to 17,144 four-cylinder cars (plus only 518 six-cylinder MonaStellas), but in the following year it leaped to 32,508 four-cylinder cars. These various production shifts were accommodated without either changing the tributaries feeding the assembly line or reducing the diversity of available models. This flexibility was fundamental to Renault’s survival in the first period of the Great Depression.
Other issues related to the social equilibrium of the plant would become apparent during this period. In the background of the image, illegible in the shadows, is a lengthy notice. Other images reveal that it lists things the workers “must” and “must not” do. For example, one must “keep the cover on the painted parts”; one must not “assemble a faulty part and say: ‘who cares, they will put it right in retouch.’”2 This type of notice combining technical and ethical instruction began to appear in Renault workshops in 1928 and remained there for the next ten years. Prior to this, signs were few in number, placed in noisy areas, and largely general in nature— “smoking forbidden,” for example. With the introduction of manual assembly lines in 1922–24, small notices identifying the station’s number and purpose were added. Later, the mechanization of the conveyors led to this obvious tie between the neatness or carefulness of the workers and the instructions of shop management. Many pictures of the whole line, presenting the suite of working stations, produced a visualization of the process, intended not so much for the workers as for visitors to the plant. These images are part of a global setting for the factory. One has to look beyond what they show to decipher the message.
Significant Classification
This photo print is mostly, but not solely, an image: it also bears a serial number in its lower right corner which identifies its “place” as an element in the photographic collection of the Renault Company. To a degree, the classification system aids in dating the photograph. It also offers insight into the evolution of the photographic department’s work of documenting the firm. This department was created in 1911, after Louis Renault became the sole boss of the family company he and two brothers had founded in 1898. In addition to making images, the newly created department collected earlier images and reproduced outside material as well. These three types of images were numbered and classified in distinct albums, with a simple jump in number to differentiate each series: the older pictures were numbered 1 and up to form a first album; the department’s new photographs were numbered 1,001 and up to form a second; and the reproduced images started at 2,001. The problem was that the photographic service soon caught up to picture number 2,000 and thus had to jump to number 3,001.
The organization of the photographic archives had to adapt to the growth of the firm and to the evolving missions of the department. In 1928, having made some 24,500 photographs, it decided to distinguish its important new thematic series through larger numeric gaps. The collection of original pictures became the “red albums” and continued the previous numbering. The reproduced images became the “blue albums,” numbered 75,000 and up. Pictures of auto parts were put in different albums starting at 100,000; the “greenalbums” at 200,000 contained images of the buildings and working situations; promotional images were gathered in the 300,000 albums; and so forth. In this way, it was improbable that the numbers assigned to one series would ever catch up with those of another.
Consequently, a picture’s identification number gives only an approximate indication of its date of production.3 Thus, our cover picture is not the 202,469th picture of the whole collection, but is instead the 2,469th of the “green albums.” There are no written documents—left nor probably ever made—which explain the evolution of this photograph-classification system. The department simply adapted its archives to its changing practical needs. It had to cope with a growing number of pictures, fit them in with its productive mission, and respond to the firm’s various demands. These different classification systems can only be deduced through a systematic analysis of the global photographic archives. Understanding it is vital in order to clarify the origin of a given print, to deduce its date of production, and also to determine how it was used as an illustration. This archival approach to an image is important for understanding its role in the changing visions of the factory. In this sense, visual archives are global documents.4
The Making of a Documentary
Having been put in the 200,000-range albums, this picture of the making of a film was considered by the photographic department as an image of work and not as the act of promotion it actually was. A young employee of the advertising department, Paul Grémont, was assigned to the service of the shooting team for a period of three months. His role above all was practical and economic. “It would have been unimaginable to stop an assembly line for several minutes to set up lights. We decided to shoot the scene on a Sunday morning, specially summoning all the necessary personnel so that the workshop didn’t appear too deserted.”5 Normal industrial work was clearly not compatible with the constraints of the filmmakers.
The resulting product, L’Automobile de France, was a propaganda film, a full-length sound documentary produced “for the glory of French industry” under the patronage of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. It was directed by Jean Loubignac, editor in chief of the Pathé-Journal and an enthusiastic defender of talking movies. It was first shown at the Gala de l’Opéra on 2 October 1934, a time of fierce industrial crisis. The screenplay constructs the story of a factory visit in the style of a fictional film, papering over the economic difficulties of the time.
No motion pictures from the post–World War II period can be found in the company’s archives. The films of that era were ordered from external production companies like Gaumont and Pathé; they have kept some footage, but no concomitant records concerning the commission, production, or utilization of those motion pictures. We therefore have little information on the authors and their intentions. What was expected of these films, and how did viewers react? Written explanations would have been of great help, but their loss does not compromise the documentary potential of the images. It compels us to make a deeper, primary analysis of the moving pictures themselves, exploiting all the hints they disclose or the clues they divulge and comparing them to the corpus of surviving films on the Renault workshops.
It turns out that L’Automobile de France came at the end of a short period (1930–34) when filmmakers and newsreel reporters were interested in filming the Renault factories. These films were targeted mostly on firm promotion, insisting on the founder’s personal success story and using cinematographic techniques to give a proper vision of the working process. Images were used as “visual evidence” of what the firm wanted people to understand about its industrial activity. Thus, they are an oriented representation of work and labor.
On the whole, industrial documentaries of this sort were in the minority among corporate films, which more typically aimed to present a firm’s products in action rather than the process of their production. Moreover, films were not the only visual medium used by the automobile industry to promote its activity and to encourage car sales. An industrial documentary was commissioned by a firm and produced by a filmmaker only if the two could expect to profit from it—if they believed the subject would attract an audience. Efficiency was expected. Indications of this expectation can be observed in the number of such films produced at different periods. There were specific moments when industrial films were made, and others when the factory was not a cinematographic subject.
Conclusion
Each type of industrial image provides a different vision of what is going on in a workshop. They show various aspects, follow specific rhythms of production, and tell their own story.6 But in a micro-based historical approach, different images of the same workshop can be compared to become hints and traces of an industrial activity that is seldom described in the written documents.7 These images represent an opportunity to observe and study details that no other records have preserved. By analyzing the context of their visual message, and by questioning both the production and reception of these corporate images, they can help us understand the ways in which people actually worked. Visual documents can therefore renew the technological, social, and cultural history of Renault and enrich our global apprehension of the industrial past.8
1. These are of the KZ14 type (a Prima4 with four cylinders and 11 horsepower). See Gilbert Hatry and Claude Le Maître, Dossiers chronologiques Renault: Voitures particulières (Paris, 1982), 5:211.
2. This notice is visible in picture number 670 (album 2, Série G, 1935).
3. Since it was placed between picture 202,338, taken on 30 January 1934, and picture 202,504, taken on 4 April 1934, we can deduce that picture 202,469 was taken in late February 1934.
4. Alain P. Michel, “L’Archive photographique,undocumentintégral: Doisneau chez les Joliot-Curie, 1942–1956,” Études photographiques 16 (May 2005): 108–19.
5. Paul Grémont, “L’Automobile de France,” De Renault Frères, constructeurs d’automobiles, à Renault Régie Nationale 18 (June 1979): 285–86.
6. See Alain P. Michel, “Corporate Films of Industrial Work: Renault (1916–1939),” in Cinematic Means, Industrial Ends: The Work of the Industrial Film, ed. Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau (Amsterdam, 2008).
7. Carlo Ginzburg, “Signes, traces, pistes: Racines d’un paradigme de l’indice,” Le Débat 6 (November 1980): 3–44.
8. See Alain P. Michel, Travail à la chaîne: Renault, 1898–1947 (Paris, 2007).
©2008 by the Society for the History of Technology.
Filed under: Vol. 49 No. 4 (October 2008)
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