Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century

Although in the 20th century the relation between literature and photography was arguably as significant as literature's relation to painting in the 19th century, over the past generation the discussion of photography's multiple intersections and interactions with writing and writers have tended to narrow to a few overly canonised works. This volume reverses this situation through the diversity and originality of the essays it gathers together: it has the potential to reawaken a field...
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Although in the 20th century the relation between literature and photography was arguably as significant as literature's relation to painting in the 19th century, over the past generation the discussion of photography's multiple intersections and interactions with writing and writers have tended to narrow to a few overly canonised works. This volume reverses this situation through the diversity and originality of the essays it gathers together: it has the potential to reawaken a field that for too long has been allowed to remain dormant. - Norman Bryson, Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism, University of California, San Diego, and author of Looking at the Overlooked. From Proust to Sebald, photography has occupied a significant place in literature, and visa versa. This book makes an important contribution to engaging with the relationship between the photograph and the text. - Steve Edwards, Open University, and author of The Making of English Photography. Discussion of literature and photography still tends to languish in the realms of image and text, rather than in the literary strategizing of photographers, or in the recurrent placing of the effects of the photographic act in twentieth-century fiction. Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century remedies this. One of the most significant outcomes of the conjunction it generates is the realisation of how much the two are interrelated in the formation of modernism and after. The collection brings together work by some of the best emerging scholars and artists in the field. I highly recommend it. - John Roberts, University of Wolverhampton, and author of The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday.