Photography has transformed the way we picture ourselves. Although
photographs seem to "prove" our existence at a given point in time,
they also demonstrate the impossibility of framing our multiple and
fragmented selves. As Linda Haverty Rugg convincingly shows,
photography's double take on self-image mirrors the concerns of
autobiographers, who see the self as simultaneously divided (in
observing/being) and unified by the autobiographical act. Rugg tracks
photography's impact on the formation of self-image through the study
of four literary autobiographers concerned with the transformative
power of photography. Obsessed with self-image, Mark Twain and August
Strindberg both attempted (unsuccessfully) to integrate photographs
into their autobiographies. While Twain encouraged photographers, he
was wary of fakery and kept a fierce watch on the distribution of his
photographic image. Strindberg, believing that photographs had occult
power, preferred to photograph himself. Because of their experiences
under National Socialism, Walter Benjamin and Christa Wolf feared the
dangerously objectifying power of photographs and omitted them from
their autobiographical writings. Yet Benjamin used them in his
photographic conception of history, which had its testing ground in
his often-ignored Berliner Kindheit um 1900. And Christa Wolf's
narrator in Patterns of Childhood attempts to reclaim her childhood
from the Nazis by reconstructing mental images of lost family
photographs. Confronted with multiple and conflicting images of
themselves, all four of these writers are torn between the knowledge
that texts, photographs, and indeed selves are haunted by
undecidability and the desire for the returned glance of a single
self.
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Photography and Autobiography
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226731483
Publisert
2018
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter