The Photographer as Autobiographer

Description

This book explores hybrid memoirs, combining text and images, authored by photographers. It contextualizes this sub-category of life writing from a historical perspective within the overall context of life writing, before taking a structural and cognitive approach to the text/image relationship. While autobiographers use photographs primarily for their illustrative or referential function, photographers have a much more complex interaction with pictures in their autobiographical accounts. This book explores how the visual aspect of a memoir may drastically alter the reader’s response to the work, but also how, in other cases, the visual parts seem disconnected from the text or underused. Contents List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: The I of the Photographer: A Historical Perspective The Pencil of Nature’s Hybridity Photography and Literature After The Pencil of Nature Photographs in Autobiography Photographers and Autobiography Photographs as Countertext Chapter 3: A Structural Approach to Photographers’ Memoirs Balance: Space and Time The Power Struggle Structural Stakes Structure: Two Filiations The Traditional Book Format The Photobooks Robert Frank, The Lines of My Hand (1989) Bill Hayward, Chasing Dragons: An Uncommon Memoir in Photographs (2015) Annie Leibovitz, A Photographer’s Life: 1990–2005 (2006) Joanne Leonard, Being in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir (2008) Tony Mendoza, Pictures with Stories: A Memoir by Tony Mendoza (2017) Alvin Langdon Coburn, Alvin Langdon Coburn Photographer: An Autobiography (1966) Gemma Levine, Just One More… (2014) Beaumont Newhall, Memoirs of a Life in Photograph (1993) Conclusion Chapter 4: A Cognitive Approach to Photographers’ Memoirs The Cognition of Hybridity Hierarchy Between Senses and Media Text–Image Integration Strategies Theory of the Graphic Novel Illustration and Subordination The Deictic Referential Logic Case Studies Chapter 5: Hold Still Hold Still’s Multimedia Balance Directionality in Hold Still Deictic Referentiality Quasi-Deictic Referentiality Forms of Indirect Referentiality Chapter 6: Conclusion Works Cited Primary Corpus Theoretical Sources General sources Photography & Autobiography: Photography & Literature The Theory & Philosophy of Photography The Theory and Cognition of Hybridity Works of Fiction or Non-Fiction Book Reviews Index