Picturing Ourselves (Paperback)

Linda Haverty Rugg

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Language: English

Published by The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1997

0226731472 / 9780226731476

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Softcover

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Paperback. Photography has transformed the way we picture ourselves. Although photographs seem to "prove" our existence at a given point in time, they also demonstrate the impossibility of framing our multiple and fragmented selves. As Linda Haverty Rugg convincingly shows, photography's double take on self-image mirrors the concerns of autobiographers, who see the self as simultaneously divided (in observing/being) and unified by the autobiographical act.Rugg tracks photography's impact on the formation of self-image through the study of four literary autobiographers concerned with the transformative power of photography. Obsessed with self-image, Mark Twain and August Strindberg both attempted (unsuccessfully) to integrate photographs into their autobiographies. While Twain encouraged photographers, he was wary of fakery and kept a fierce watch on the distribution of his photographic image. Strindberg, believing that photographs had occult power, preferred to photograph himself.Because of their experiences under National Socialism, Walter Benjamin and Christa Wolf feared the dangerously objectifying power of photographs and omitted them from their autobiographical writings. Yet Benjamin used them in his photographic conception of history, which had its testing ground in his often-ignored Berliner Kindheit um 1900. And Christa Wolf's narrator in Patterns of Childhood attempts to reclaim her childhood from the Nazis by reconstructing mental images of lost family photographs.Confronted with multiple and conflicting images of themselves, all four of these writers are torn between the knowledge that texts, photographs, and indeed selves are haunted by undecidability and the desire for the returned glance of a single self. Photography has transformed the way we picture ourselves. This text tracks the impact of photography on the formation of the self-image through the study of four literary autobiographers concerned with the power of photography. All four writers tried to reconcile the image with the self. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.…

Seller Inventory # 9780226731476

Title
Picturing Ourselves (Paperback)
Author
Linda Haverty Rugg
Publisher
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
Publication year
1997
Condition
new
Binding
Paperback
Language
English
ISBN 10
0226731472
ISBN 13
9780226731476

CitiRetail

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