Literature and photography: To remind, to observe, to preserve

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.48162/rev.43.025

Keywords:

literature, photography, W.G. Sebald, memory, inner gaze

Abstract

In this article we study the relationship between literature and photography taking into account the aspects around memory, the fact of preserving it through memory and fixing it through writing and visual image. The objective is to analyze how photography operates in the narrative process, dialoguing with the spaces and times between writing, photography and the art of memory. Taking into account this framework of debates, we study a series of texts by the German writer W.G. Sebald: Vertigo (1990), Campo Santo and On the natural history of destruction (1986). The hypothesis that we propose is that in Sebald´s narrative some in-between-places emerge from the intersection between writing and photography that allows to show an inner gaze and also selects mental images and memories to build both personal history and History. The photographs operate by evoking the past, building the reality and the intimate that fears to be forgotten; consequently, the nostalgic subjectivity generated by the photographs is linked to the inner experience.

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Published

24-12-2022 — Updated on 24-12-2022

How to Cite

Caminada, L. (2022). Literature and photography: To remind, to observe, to preserve. Boletín GEC, (30), 54–74. https://doi.org/10.48162/rev.43.025