Literature and Photography: Writing and Thinking with Light

Catalog description

"I didn't draw any people," Kafka once wrote, "I told a story. Those are pictures, only pictures...one takes photographs of things in order to forget them. My stories are a way of closing my eyes." Kafka's sentences invite us to reflect upon the relationship between literature, photography, and philosophical thought—from the first heliograph in 1826 and the inception of the daguerreotype in 1839 to the digital image of today. Taking as our point of departure the relation of literature and "light-writing," we will address selected issues in the historical and conceptual interaction among word, image, and critical thought. Our wager: texts and photographic images share a common relationship to time, desire, death, mourning, and politics. Writers may include Kafka, Proust, Benjamin, Kracauer, Barthes, Heidegger, and Derrida. Images by photographers including August Sander and Andrew Moore. Students from diverse fields welcome.