Ekphrasis in Photography Lyrics: Methods of Representation

Abstract

The article deals with ekphrasis (verbal description of visual artworks) in lyrics about photography. The purpose of this article is to clarify the possibility of using the term “ekphrasis” in relation to photographic lyrics and to divide the phenomena of photopoetics and photoekphrasis. The difference becomes obvious as we analyze the following texts: “Photograph from September 11” and “Hitler’s First Photograph” by Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, “A Snapshot” by Russian poet Bella Akhmadulina and “From the Album” by Russian poet Genrikh Sapgir. The four texts are characterized by a special timing structure: past, present and future, with some regularity, exist within the description of the same photographs. In addition, the space of all four texts is open. This is a feature not only of photoekphrasis, but also of photopoetics as a type of visual poetry, which does not depend on the type of description. In all four texts, the author's position is inevitably present and recognized. In the first three cases, we know the picture or the person to which the subject refers. In the fourth one, the poet refers to his personal archives or memories. But “Hitler’s First Photograph” refers to the well-known historical personality only in the title and some mentions in the text. Thus, in our opinion, only “Photograph from September 11” by Wislawa Szymborska and “A Snapshot” by Bella Akhmadulina can be considered as ekphrasis. However, “From the Album” by Genrikh Sapgir and “Hitler’s First Photograph” by Szymborska features photographic discourse and fragmentary descriptions to create a photopoetic text, but not an ekphrasis. Apparently, the ekphrasis of a photograph is not only a description of one specific and existing in common culture photograph, but also a restoration of its poetics in a lyrical text.