Phototextuality: photography, fiction, criticism
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14725860903106112
ISSN1472-5878
Autores Tópico(s)Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration
ResumoAbstract Ever since the advent of the medium in the mid-nineteenth century, photography and literature have been involved in an almost constant dialogue and process of intersemiotic cross-fertilisation. The scholarly field that has recently begun to develop around the critical study of this kind of aesthetic border crossing – what will here be called 'phototextuality' – is as burgeoning as it is multidisciplinary, spanning over 150 years of literary, artistic, and cultural history. In this article – conceived as a 'state of the art' of contemporary phototextual practice – the author proposes to clarify our understanding of what a phototext is and does by focusing on three particular manifestations of the trend: namely, narrative photographs, photographically engaged fictions and a particularly stunning work of critical inquiry that embodies, as much as it examines, the image–text paradigm. Notes [1] This is not to say that Kertész's pictures are completely devoid of ideology. In fact, all the photographs in On Reading are, in some way or another, coded with respect to class, race, age, gender and ethnicity. Moreover, while On Reading might, as I say, encourage readers to consider the universality of reading, its insistent focus on a literate public stands in stark contrast to the millions of people worldwide, invisible here, who cannot read. [2] On Reading represents an interesting visual counterpart to Michel de Certeau's notion of reading as an 'antidiscpline'. See Certeau 1988, xx–xxii. [3] See Höfer's gorgeous compendium of photographs of libraries from around the world in Libraries (2005). Morell's photographs, many of which seem to sanctify the sacred materiality of the text and the ideas contained within, are collected in his A Book of Books (2002). [4] Along with Morell, a number of contemporary photographers are, nevertheless, still interested in exploring the hidden potential of the book form. For a few of the more compelling examples see Allen (2007 Allen, Thomas M. 2007. Uncovered, New York: Aperture. [Google Scholar]) and Joseph (2006 Joseph, Marc. 2006. New and used, London: Steidl. [Google Scholar]). In an age marked by the advent of electronic books, the recent reissue of Kertész's On Reading (London: Norton, 2008) also speaks to a sense of nostalgia for the printed word. [5] See, for example, Stephens (1998 Stephens, Mitchell. 1998. The rise of the image, the fall of the word, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]). [6] Modernist art critic Clement Greenberg famously dismissed photography precisely because he noted in it a kind of hybridity that resisted his aesthetics of pure forms: 'The art in photography is literary art before it is anything else; its triumphs and monuments are historical, anecdotal, reportorial, observational before they are purely pictorial.' Clement Greenberg, 'Four photographers', New York Review of Books, January 23, 1964. Quoted in W. J. Mitchell (1994 Mitchell, W. J. 1994. The reconfigured eye: Visual truth in the post-photographic era, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Google Scholar], 192). [7] My understanding of the term 'phototext' considers the photographic specificity of W. J. T. Mitchell's seminal definition of the 'imagetext', while more generally referring to those works that allow us to explore the reciprocity between both media. See Mitchell (1994 Mitchell, W. J. T. 1994. Picture theory: Essays on verbal and visual communication, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar], 89, n. 9). For a more nuanced discussion of my particular spelling of the term, see Blatt (2009 Blatt, Ari J. 2009. The interphototextual dimension of Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie's L'usage de la photo. Word and Image, 25(1): 46–55. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [8] Of course, as Aron Kibédi Varga has argued, while images like these might be suggestive of stories, unlike the literary text a single photograph (as opposed to a series of linked or juxtaposed images) is not entirely capable of narration in the literary sense: 'The image is not a second way of telling the tale, but of evoking it' (Kibédi Varga 1988 Kibédi Varga, Aron. 1988. Stories told by pictures. Style, 22(2): 194–208. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 204). Crewdson's photographs, therefore, do not constitute a narrative in and of themselves. Rather, their focus on a pregnant (or, for Crewdson, 'unresolved') moment reflective of an array of possible narratives that viewers, in turn, are invited to invent suggests a series of events that unfold over time. Crewdson's photographs, like many of the large-scale narrative photographs being produced today, also mobilise the size of the picture frame to create multiple vectors of the image that, when viewed sequentially, also elicit an element of temporality (Ryan 2004 Ryan, Marie-Laure. 2004. Narrative across media: The languages of storytelling, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. [Google Scholar], 139–41). [9] As Lori Pauli notes, 'Many histories of photography have tended to ignore the staged photograph, glossing over it as little more than a quaint and fleeting aberration within the evolution of the medium' (Pauli 2006 Pauli, Lori, ed. 2006. Acting the part: Photography as theater, London and New York: Merrell Press. [Google Scholar], 68). [10] A number of these images were the subject of a successful exhibit, in 2007, at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts entitled 'Tell Me a Story: Narrative Photography Now'. See also the catalogue for 'Acting Out: Invented Melodrama in Contemporary Photography', a 2005 exhibit at the University of Iowa Museum of Art (Edwards 2005 Edwards, Katherine. 2005. Acting out: Invented melodrama in contemporary photography, Iowa City: University of Iowa Museum of Art. [Google Scholar]). For more on the especially important role women artists have played in the development of contemporary narrative photography see Souter (2000 Souter, Lucy. 2000. Dial 'P' for panties: Narrative photography in the 1990s. Afterimage, 27(4): 9–12. [Google Scholar]). [11] Many of my examples derive from the French literary tradition not merely because French writers have always been intrigued by photography, but, more simply, because French literature is the field that I know best. [12] Through reading Searching for Sebald, one gets a sense rather quickly of just how difficult it can be to describe Sebald's interdisciplinary project. In her introduction, Lise Patt refers to Sebald's work as both an 'artist book project' and an oeuvre composed of 'prose fictions'. Where Sebald refers to himself as a 'bricoleur', Patt calls him both a 'curator' and an 'archivist'. Other references to 'scholar', 'autodidact' art historian and 'novice' round out the portrait of this eclectic artist. See Patt (2007 Patt, Lise, ed. 2007. Searching for Sebald: Photography after W.G. Sebald, Los Angeles: Institute of Cultural Inquiry. [Google Scholar], 16–97).
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