Photography and Literature by François Brunet

Abstract

MLR, 105.3, 2010 821 Balzac's fiction, then, as Thornton illustrates in some astute readings of his novels, both shaped and was shaped by advertising. The distinctive modernity of the advertising culture that Thornton delineates here stems, at least in part, from the juxtapositions that emerged when different advertisements were pasted on top of one another, orwhen the different registers of advertisement and fictional textwere placed in close proximity. It isnot difficult to discern something of the same heterogeneity inThornton's own critical approach: the book is broken up into rapidly consumable sections, inwhich a multitude of suggestive and enticing critical and theoretical voices (Althusser, Benjamin, Baudrillard, Adorno, Freud, and more) flitin and out of the text to good effect.Oc casionally, the questions raised in these passages are leftfrustratingly unexplored, and there is clearlymore work to be done in the rich field thatThornton stakes out. In fact, themain problem with the book is in the contrast between its wide-ranging approach to criticism and the narrowness of its focus on just two novelists. Why concentrate only on Dickens and Balzac? The conclusions reached in the single chapter devoted to each are fascinating but ultimately rather circumscribed. Either an in-depth study of one of these authors, or an approach that sought to cover more of the nineteenth century than has been possible here, would perhaps have resulted in an even richerwork. University of York David McAllister Photography and Literature. By Francois Brunet. London: Reaktion. 2009. 173 pp. ?i5-95- ISBN 978-1-86189-429-8. This sumptuously illustrated volume is the latest in Reaktion Books' Exposures series on photography, and examines the shifting relationship between literature and photography from the latter s invention in 1839 up to the present. Francois Brunet modestly describes his study as an exercise in synthesis, discussing two media existing 'in solidarity as he puts it.His emphasis falls primarily on US, British, and French material, and his volume gives a fascinating account of ex changes between these cultures. The invention of photography was a subject of rivalry between France (Louis Daguerre) and Britain (W. H. Fox Talbot), though Brunet shows that each figure pioneered different applications of themedium. The 1840s saw a surge of popularity in daguerreotypes, as they became known, while Talbot published the first photographic book, his serial volume The Pencil ofNature (1844-46). For the purposes of Brunet's study thiswas more important in its blending of images with words and also for introducing the unconsciously recorded detail, which gave photography a striking difference from painting. By themid-nineteenth century photography had become assimilated into the visual imagery of tourism (Francis Frith) and into social reportage in works such as Henry Mayhew's recording of the London poor. As Brunet rightly stresses, there was an explosion of the visual in this period, and by the end of the century lavish albums of photographs were being produced in theUSA on theWest, theArctic, 822 Reviews and Native Americans. A volume specifically on US photography is forthcoming in theExposures series,which will no doubt expand on these topics. While Brunet explicitly states thathe is not discussing the impact of photogra phy on literarypractice?a subject in itself?nevertheless he sheds fascinating light on the early responses to the new medium by writers. With the rare exception of Hawthorne, who wove daguerreotypes intohis novel TheHouse of theSeven Gables, writers tended to comment on photography in private rather than in theirmain works. Poe is one case in point, commenting enthusiastically on daguerreotypes in anonymous articles whose authorship was not known until long afterhis death. Baudelaire is another, but here Brunet argues that photography tended to become included in Baudelaire's general attacks on rising vulgarity rather than from any opposition to themedium itself.Two figures stand out as champions of photogra phy inmid-century: Lady Eastlake in Britain and Oliver Wendell Holmes in the USA, who each in their differentways pioneered the recognition of the semiotics of photography, which was to be developed in the twentieth century by figures such as Susan Sontag and of course Roland Barthes. Brunet identifies three phases to the cultural assimilation of photography. In the 'Kodak revolution' at the turn...