Photography and Literature (Exposures)

Photography and Literature (Exposures)

by François Brunet (Author)

Synopsis

Roland Barthes, one of photography's most influential critics, once described the trouble introduced by the advent of photography. Studies of literature and photography tend to assess the literary effects of photography, with literature seen as the older, broader, more established cultural form, and photography the new, alien upstart. "Photography and Literature" instead reverses the angle of vision to examine photography's encounters with literature from the point of view of photography, providing a new way of understanding its interplay with literature and the printed page. Francois Brunet begins by showing how photography's invention and its publication were shaped by written culture, both scientific and literary. In turn he examines its early and durable incarnation in the book format, the ongoing and often repetitive discovery' of photography by writers, and, finally, how, in the twentieth century, photography and literature are seen to trade tools and even merge formats. He also focuses on writings by photographers, from William Henry Fox Talbot's groundbreaking exploration of photography in "The Pencil of Nature" of the 1840s, to Raymond Depardon's correspondence or Sophie Calle's projects with Jean Baudrillard and Paul Auster. Ultimately, Brunet argues that the histories of photography and literature since 1840 have been drawing closer together, and that their convergence has provided recent writing with a new photo-textual' genre. Offering a wealth of examples from autobiography, manifestos and fiction, and a fascinating variety of images from the mid-nineteenth century to the twenty-first, "Photography and Literature" will be of interest to anyone passionate about the historic relationship of text and image.

$4.20

Save:$15.84 (79%)

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 144
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 01 Jun 2009

ISBN 10: 1861894295
ISBN 13: 9781861894298

Media Reviews
Brunet's beautifully illustrated study shows how, starting with the British pioneer William Fox Talbot, photography has shed this aura of objectivity to become a medium of individual expression. Today, photography is the new muse of literature and it subverts the very reality its images were once thought to reflect with such veracity. The Guardian It is the scope and enthusiasm with which Photography and Literature connects the literary impulse with photography's vision of the world that makes this book a welcome addition. Source magazine As Brunet skillfully negotiates more than 150 years of photographic history, he offers a coherent argument for the emergence of photography as a kind of writing, with possibilities for narrative and fiction that exceed its promise to capture the world as it is. The Wilson Quarterly
Author Bio
Francois Brunet is Professor of American Art and Literature at the University Paris Diderot - Paris 7, and is author of La Naissance de l'idee de photographie (2000), co-editor of Images in the West: Survey Photographs in French Collections, 1860-1880 (2007), and a regular contributor to journals, including Trans-atlantica, Etudes Photographiques and Aperture.