Light Writing & Life Writing: Photography in AutobiographyOn the surface, the use of photography in autobiography appears to have a straightforward purpose: to illustrate and corroborate the text. But in the wake of poststructuralism, the role of photography in autobiography is far from simple or one-dimensional. Both media are increasingly self-conscious, argues Timothy Adams, and combining them intensifies rather than reduces the complexity and ambiguity of each taken separately. Focusing on works by Paul Auster, Maxine Hong Kingston, Sheila Ortiz Taylor, Sandra Ortiz Taylor, N. Scott Momaday, Michael Ondaatje, Reynolds Price, Eudora Welty, Wright Morris, and Edward Weston, Adams explores the ways in which text and image can interact with and reflect on one another. Photography may stimulate, inspire, or seem to document autobiography, he demonstrates, but it may also confound verbal narrative. Conversely, autobiography may mediate, motivate, or even take the form of photography. Because both media exist on the border between fact and fiction, Adams argues, they often undercut just as easily as they reinforce each other. Exploring the interrelations between photography and autobiography uncovers an inherent tendency in both to conceal as much as they reveal. |
Contents
Maxine Hong Kingston | 40 |
Sheila Ortiz Taylor and Sandra Ortiz Taylor | 57 |
Michael Ondaatje | 103 |
Copyright | |
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actual photographs Agee Auster auto autobiography Billy the Kid biography Buddy Bolden called captions China Clear Pictures Cloak of Light Collected Coming through Slaughter Daybooks describes diary echoes edited Edward Weston entries Essays Eudora Welty example eyes face family album family photographs father fiction FIGURE genre grandmother graphs Home Place Imaginary Parents imagination Invention of Solitude Kingston Kiowa literary look Mammedaty Maxine Hong memoir memory Mexico Michael Ondaatje mirror Mississippi Momaday's Morris's mother Nancy Nancy Newhall narrative narrator Newhall nonfiction novel Ondaatje's painting parallel Paul Auster person photogra portrait portraiture pose prose description refers reproduced Reynolds Price Roland Barthes Sandra Ortiz Taylor scene Scott Momaday seems self-portrait sense Sheila Ortiz Sheila Ortiz Taylor sisters snapshots story suggests Tina Modotti tion tographs University Press visual voice Welty's Will's Boy Woman Warrior Wright Morris Writer's Beginnings York