Home - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century
Editor: David Cunningham, Andrew Fisher and Sas May
Date Of Publication: Jun 2005
Isbn13: 9781904303466
Isbn: 1-904303-46-3
Photography and Literature in the Twentieth-Century offers an accessible and fresh approach to an object of interdisciplinary research that is currently receiving increased international attention. Providing a broad historical schema, and examining pivotal moments within it, the collection brings together a range of writers and practitioners who help to guide the reader through a historical cross-section of current work in this area. Unlike most existing studies, this volume considers both key literary figures, from Proust to Sebald, and photographic practitioners, from Heartfield to Sekula, in order to give a commanding overview of its subject that is both well-informed and often ground-breaking. With original and accessible essays by acknowledged experts in the field, this is a book that should be of interest not only to students and teachers in departments of literature and photography, but also to those in cultural studies and art history, as well as photographic artists.

David Cunningham is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Westminster and an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy.

Andrew Fisher is an artist and writer who has exhibited work both nationally and internationally. He currently teaches in the Photography Department of Camberwell College of Arts.

Sas Mays teaches aesthetics and critical theory at the University of Westminster. His research concerns the gender politics of the archive in contemporary aesthetics.

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.

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

We recommend

Music
Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology

Education
Between the Two: A Nomadic Inquiry into Collaborative Writing and Subjectivity

Cultural Studies
James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough, Second Edition

Interesting reviews

From Kerouac Ascending: Memorabilia of the Decade of On the Road

“Katherine Burkman, best known for her contributions to Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and modern drama studies in general, now provides an essential reference for students of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and the beats through this memoir by Elbert Lenrow. A beloved teacher at the New School for Social Research, Lenrow met and taught Jack Kerouac in the late forties, befriending him and Allen Ginsberg as well. The book offers unprecedented insight into the beats in general and Kerouac’s development as a writer, thinker, and cultural force in American literature. Howard Cunnell, who introduces the book, notes that through his friendship with Kerouac, ‘Lenrow got to ride in what would become the most famous car in modern American literature.’ And thanks to this book, now readers of Kerouac Ascending do, too.”
—Ann C. Hall, Professor, Ohio Dominican University; President, Harold Pinter Society

“The larger significance of the sustained and sustaining friendship between Elbert Lenrow and Kerouac and Ginsberg in this book is that it exhibits Jack and Allen in ways that are seldom, if ever, represented in accounts of their lives. As a bonus, from this fine, small book, the reader can acquire an enriched and enhanced understanding of the multifarious political, literary, and artistic relationships of virtually all the principal players in the cultural scene in the mid- to late 20th century.”
—James L. Battersby, Professor Emeritus of English, Ohio State University

“Always their affectionate elder, Lenrow presents Kerouac and Ginsberg mostly in their own words, making no broad claim or judgments beyond the recognition that both writers spoke for their time as Walt Whitman did for his and that they have become iconic figures for a literary movement. It is a modest but important work presenting original materials saved by a gentle, sensitive, and literate man.”
—Mark S. Auburn, Professor Emeritus of English, former Senior Vice President and Provost at the University of Akron