Light Writing and Life Writing

Photography in Autobiography

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by Timothy Dow Adams

University of North Carolina Press

Due/Published January 2000, 368 pages, paper

ISBN 0807847925

On the surface, the use of photography in autobiography appears to have a straightforward purpose: to illustrate and corroborate the text. But , as Adams suggests, the role of photography in autobiography is far from simple or one-dimensional. Both media are increasingly self-conscious, he argue, and combining them intensifies rather than reduces the complexity and ambiguity of each taken separately.

Focusing on works by Paul Auster, Maxine Hong Kingston, Sheila Ortiz Taylor, Sandra Ortiz Taylor, N. Scott Momaday, Michael Ondaatje, Reynolds Price, Eudora Welty, Wright Morris, and Edward Weston, Adams explores the ways in which text and image can interact with and reflect on one another. Photography may stimulate, inspire, or seem to document autobiography, he demonstrates, but it may also confound verbal narrative. Conversely, autobiography may mediate, motivate, or even take the form of photography. Because both media exist on the border between fact and fiction, Adams argues, they often undercut just as easily as they reinforce each other. Exploring the interrelations between photography and autobiography uncovers an inherent tendency in both to conceal as much as they reveal.

CONTENTS

Preface
Introduction. I Am a Camera

Part I. Writing the Picture: Autobiographies with Few or No Photographs
1. Camera Obscura: Paul Auster

2. Sojourner Truth: Maxine Hong Kingston
3. Case History: Sheila Ortiz Taylor and Sandra Ortiz Taylor

Part II. Collage: Autobiographies That Combine Words and Photographs
4. We Have All Gone into the World of Light: N. Scott Momaday
5. Available Light: Michael Ondaatje
6. A Life Lived like Water: Reynolds Price

Part III. Picturing the Writing: Autobiographies by Photographers
7. Every Feeling Waits upon Its Gesture: Eudora Welty
8. The Mirror without a Memory: Wright Morris
9. Still Life Writing: Edward Weston

Conclusion. We Are Not Our Own Light: Self-Portraiture and Autobiography
Notes
Works Cited
Index