Ghost Image""Photographs are not innocent." Guibert writes in one of the most provocative essays in Ghost Image, a collection of critical and autobiographical writings on photography translated for the first time into English by Robert Bononno. "They influence and...betray what is hidden beneath the skin. They weave not only lines and grids, but plots, and they cast spells....They are an impressionable material that welcomes spirits." Guibert, photography critic of La Monde for many years, himself weaves a spell with his many topics and moods, delineated in a continually unpredictable mixture of precise descriptions and poetic musing. Guibert recalls family members through the frozen reality of pictures taken at different times. He offers a compact history of the Polaroid, and informative remarks on noted travel journals resembling photography. He confesses to having betrayed an actress he photographed, and silently ponders whether certain pictures should arouse him, adding his views on the differences between visual erotica and pornography. His own occasional role as model causes ambivalence." "A flurry of other incidents and thoughts - some real, others fantasy - crowd Guibert's pages as he struggles to fathom the essence of that which captures life. In an unforgettable conclusion, through his account of an enigmatic portrait and its strange fate, Guibert finally achieves the union of person and picture he sought. Ghost Image is a collection of beautifully and hauntingly written essays on what is and what lies behind any photograph."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
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actors already André Kertész asked beauty become beneath BERNARD FAUCON body camera Claudia Cardinale cloth color covered dance dancer dark dead death Diane Arbus dream dress Duane Michals Editions de Minuit erotic photograph eyes face FANTASY father feel film fovea framed France front Gallimard gaze gesture GHOST IMAGE girl glass graph hair hand head Helmut Newton Hervé Guibert hide jacket kind light longer look MAC WELLMAN magazine memory Michèle Morgan mother neck never nude once paper passed photobooth picture piece plastic Polaroid pornographic portrait preparation prints proof reptile room retouching artist Sankai Juku scene seemed seen self-portrait side skin sleep smile someone spell stomach story studio suddenly SUN & MOON taken tape Terence Stamp tion tograph ture Walker Evans wearing window woman writing young