Abstract
This essay reconsiders the relations between photography and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, suggesting that Proust's whole novel is ‘about’ photography. Re‐reading Mieke Bal's The Mottled Screen: Reading Proust Visually prompts an address to and reworking of Bal's concept of focalization. Photography's inventors, early practitioners, techniques and processes are discussed, as well as later accounts, such as Walter Benjamin's ‘Little History of Photography’. It is argued that Proust not only documents the crises precipitated in Western subjectivity by photography, but also helps us to see that this medium really is the ‘pencil or nature’, the claim made by Henry Fox Talbot. Reflecting throughout on the relationships between the first‐person pronoun, ever present in In Search of Lost Time, and the second‐person pronoun, the essay concludes with an analysis of the exchanges between the two and a consideration of the interplay between the film projector and the still camera to dramatize perception in Chantal Akerman's film The Captive (2000), based on Proust's The Prisoner.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
