It’s by Honoré Daumier, and is an illustration for M. Louis Huart’s Physiologie Du Flaneur, 1841.

The binoculars are a worry aren’t they? I mean they’re not likely to be very useful for looking at anything in the street are they? Things are surely close enough that you don’t need a powerful lens to zoom in on anything. Compare and contrast with the popularity of the basic 28mm lens as used by a great many street photographers, not least Garry Winogrand.

Though other camera options were available, as Diane Arbus demonstrates here.

This is the title page of Physiologie Du Flaneur,

which does suggest that the flaneur is a bit of a lech, watching all the girls go by, maybe even following them. This is of course all about the male gaze. According to Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson in her Paris as Revolutionthe flaneur’s gaze ‘begins in the activity of following women.’ This seems impossible to prove or disprove.

Certainly this fellow, Le Flaneur Parisien by Theophile Steinlen looks dead dodgy, whether he’s about to follow the woman or not.

At least you couldn’t accuse any of the flaneurs illustrated here of being sneaky. You can see exactly what they’re up to, and I’m reminded of Walter Benjamin’s words: ‘Dialectic of flaneurie: on one side, the man who feels himself viewed by all and sundry as a true suspect and, on the other side, the man who is utterly undiscoverable, the hidden man.’ These guys look completely discovered.

But you know, it was a different age.