[Air-L] CFP: Hybridity in Life Writing: How Text and Images Work Together to Tell a Life

[Rob Gallagher]

Hello all,


Please see below for details of an upcoming conference that may be of
interest to colleagues researching forms of multimodal self-presentation
and self-narration online.


Many thanks,


Rob Gallagher

(on behalf of the organisers)



Call for Papers
International and Interdisciplinary Conference



*Hybridity in Life Writing: How Text and Images Work Together to Tell a
Life*



Organizers: Clare Brant (King’s College London), Arnaud Schmitt (Bordeaux
University & LARCA Université de Paris)

Venue: Université de Paris, Paris, 7–8 July, 2022

Keynote Speaker: Pr. Teresa Bruś (Wrocław University)



 Please submit an abstract of approx. 250 words and a short bionote to

clare.brant at kcl.ac.uk and arnaud.schmitt at u-bordeaux.fr by *30 November,
2021* at the latest.



It might seem that, to some extent, almost all visual content in
autobiographical texts is visual *aid*. But what is it in aid of? Of the
text, somehow. Victor Burgin notes that “we rarely see a photograph in use
which does not have a caption or a title, it is more usual to encounter
photographs attached to long texts, or with copy superimposed over them.
Even a photograph which has no actual writing on or around it is traversed
by language when it is ‘read’ by a viewer.” As powerful as images can be,
and they frequently outshine the text that precedes or follows them, their
narrative potential is nevertheless tethered to the text that introduces
them or comments them a posteriori. In other words, the text has the first
or last word, it *frames* the picture and, in a way, ‘tames’ its impact: a
picture is at the text’s service. And yet, it can also be argued that
images contradict texts in the same Derridean way as texts and more
particularly words contradict each other, or at least unsettle themselves.
In *Picture Theory*, W. J. T. Mitchell states that he wants “to
concentrate, however, on the kinds of photographic essays which contain
strong textual elements, where the text is most definitely an ‘invasive’
and even domineering element.” Thus, even if and when they are supposed to
work together, words and images in a memoir establish a balance of power,
one that requires investigation as the autobiographical narrative of a
hybrid memoir depends on this very balance.


>From a historical point of view, this balance of power may also result from
the evolution of each medium’s status, as an art form or cultural artefact.
For instance, it can be argued that the first memoir written by a
photographer is Talbot’s *The Pencil of Nature*. Teresa Bruś claims that “*The
Pencil of Nature*, presented to the public in 1844, is the first
autobiographical book of a photographer. […] aligning the ‘art’ of
photography with a rhetorical, if not a literary, project.” But in *Photography
and Literature, *François Brunet points out that, contrary to what might
have been expected, Talbot’s effort had little effect on the publishing
world, and this “estrangement of photography from literature,” with the odd
exception, lasted until the end of the 19th century. According to him,
nothing much happened before the beginning of the 20th century and “the
growing recognition of photography as a distinct art form.” It makes sense
that photography’s relation with literature very much depended on its
evolving status.[1] <#_ftn1>


On a more positive note, hybridity may also be seen to operate beyond this
semantic and cultural balance of power and to aim at an *additional meaning*
created thanks to intermediality at a level where, despite their intrinsic
cognitive features and differences, text and images are able to produce
content that they would not have been able to produce had they been kept
separate. In a way, it hinges on how a book balances text and images, how
it ‘monitors’ intermediality. But Gilles Mora writes that “photography has
rarely generated autobiographical works able to exist without the support
of language” (“*la photographie a rarement produit des œuvres
autobiographiques qui puissent se passer de l’appui du langage*”). Maybe
because one of the main (if not the only) functions of photographs in life
writing is to *authenticate*. Roland Barthes is mostly responsible for the
widespread belief that photography is better at accessing the past than
words, principally through two assertions he made in *Camera Lucida*: “it
[photography] does not invent; it is authentication incarnate. […] Every
photograph certifies a presence” (“*elle [la photographie] n’invente rien ;
elle est l’authentification même. […] **Toute photographie est un
certificat de presence*”) and “It seems that Photography always carries its
referent with it […]” (“*On dirait que la Photographie emporte toujours son
référent avec elle* […]”). The role of non-photographic images in hybrid
memoirs or autobiographical works is thus more complex as paintings for
instance do not have this ability to authenticate and similarly to words do
not “carry their referent with them.” However, in a post-PhotoShop age, the
way photographs have the ability to tamper with or even falsify “their
referent” can be seen as highly problematic in an autobiographical context.


The same can be said about graphic memoirs, a booming field, as drawings
are also very low on the ‘authentication scale’. Nevertheless,
Narratologist Robyn Warhol made the following remark regarding them: “The
juxtaposition of cartooning with verbal memoir offers methods of
representing subjectivity that are unprecedented in traditional
autobiography. Indeed, as Versaci asserts ‘while many prose memoirists
address the complex nature of identity and the self, comic book memoirists
are able to represent such complexity in ways that cannot be captured in
words alone’.” But is this “subjectivity” represented separately or
jointly? And in the latter case, how? Also not as authenticating as
photographs, paintings remain nevertheless a potential narrative resource
for any autobiographer. In *The Privileged Eye, Max *Kozloff reminds us
that “a main distinction between a painting and a photograph is that the
painting alludes to its content, whereas the photograph summons it, from
wherever and whenever, to us.” It might only be “alluding to a content,”
but a painting in a memoir simply is another form of hybridity and a way
for an author to diversify the work’s content. Stanley Cavell wrote that we
might say that “a painting *is* a world” and that “a photograph is *of *the
world” but a painting in many ways continue to allude to *the* world, and
more precisely to the autobiographer’s world.


Finally, beyond the intermedial question, there is the issue of
autobiography, and more specifically autobiography at the beginning of the
21st century, a different type from previous centuries, one more informed
of the limits of referential writing and more than ever aware of its
importance; one also that has often outgrown its usual vessel—even though
the latter remains its most prestigious one in terms of official
recognition­—and has branched out into social and often more visual media
(just one example among so many: the renowned American photographer Stephen
Shore’s Instagram account on which he posts one picture everyday). Sidonie
Smith and Julia Watson have identified and explored “the
visual-verbal-virtual contexts of life narrative” which have multiplied
through for example performance and visual arts, autobiographical films and
videos, and variously curated online lives.


Véronique Montémont rightfully points out that Philippe Lejeune, one of the
most prominent life writing theorists, “does not mention photography
because for him autobiography involves enunciation, a narrator in other
terms.” And yet photography has entered the field of autobiography in a
multitude of ways. In *Picturing Ourselves: Photography & Autobiography,*
Linda Haverty Rugg sums up her study’s main objectives thus: “This book
explores the intersection of these two debates—the point at which
photographs enter the autobiographical act. What (or how) do photographs
mean in the context of an autobiography?” The aim of this symposium is to
explore the point at which an image, *any* image, whether fixed or moving
(in vlogs for instance), enters the autobiographical act and confronts the
verbal form.


*Keynote Speaker*: Pr. Teresa Bruś (Wrocław University), author of the
forthcoming *Face Forms in Photography and Life Writing of the 1920s and
1930s*







------------------------------

[1] <#_ftnref1> “At any rate, the issue of how photographers have related
to writing, literature, and expression is, in my view, closely linked to
the issue of their public, social status, and by the same token to the
various ways photographers have chosen to represent themselves” (Brunet).



-- 
Rob Gallagher
Lecturer in Film & Media, Manchester Metropolitan University
@r_gealga