Photo-texts: Contemporary French Writing of the Photographic Image

256 Pages·2010·4.403 MB·English

by  Andy Stafford

Photo-texts
Contemporary French Writing of the
Photographic Image
Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures 14
Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures
Series Editors
EDMUND SMYTH CHARLES FORSDICK
Manchester Metropolitan University University of Liverpool
Editorial Board
JACQUELINE DUTTON LYNN A. HIGGINS MIREILLE ROSELLO
University of Melbourne Dartmouth College University of Amsterdam
MICHAEL SHERINGHAM DAVID WALKER
University of Oxford University of Sheffield
This series aims to provide a forum for new research on modern and contem-
porary French and francophone cultures and writing. The books published
in Contemporary French and Francophone Culturesreflect a wide variety of
critical practices and theoretical approaches, in harmony with the intellec-
tual, cultural and social developments which have taken place over the past
few decades. All manifestations of contemporary French and francophone
culture and expression are considered, including literature, cinema, popular
culture, theory. The volumes in the series will participate in the wider debate
on key aspects of contemporary culture.
1 Chris Tinker, Georges Brassens and 7 Martin Munro, Exile and Post-
Jacques Brel: Personal and Social 1946 Haitian Literature: Alexis,
Narratives in Post-war Chanson Depestre, Ollivier, Laferrière,
2 Debra Kelly, Autobiography and Danticat
Independence: Selfhood and 8 Maeve McCusker, Patrick
Creativityin Postcolonial African Chamoiseau: Recovering Memory
Writing in French 9 Bill Marshall, The French Atlantic:
3 Matthew Screech, Masters of the Travels in Culture and History
Ninth Art: Bandes dessinées and 10 Celia Britton, The Sense of
Franco-Belgian Identity Community in French Caribbean
4 Akane Kawakami, Travellers’ Fiction
Visions. French Literary 11 Aedín Ní Loingsigh, Postcolonial
Encounters withJapan, 1881–2004 Eyes: Intercontinental Travel in
5 Nicki Hitchcott, Calixthe Beyala: Francophone African Literature
Performances of Migration 12 Lawrence R. Schehr, French Post-
6 Jane Hiddleston, Assia Djebar: Out Modern Masculinities: From
of Africa Neuromatrices to Seropositivity
13 Mireille Rosello, The Reparative in
Narratives: Works of Mourning in
Progress
ANDY STAFFORD
Photo-texts
Contemporary French Writing of
the Photographic Image
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
for Archie, évidemment
First published 2010 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZU
Copyright © 2010 Andy Stafford
The right of Andy Stafford to be identified as the author of this book has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A British Library CIP record is available
ISBN 978-1-84631-052-2 cased
Typeset by XL Publishing Services, Tiverton
Printed and bound by the MPG Books Group
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction 1
1 Image-text: From the ‘Photobook’ to ‘Photo-essayism’ 29
2 Found Family Photos: Voicing in Anne-Marie Garat’s Essayism 55
3 My Favourite Piccies: Sequencing, Structuring and Essayism
in Photo-Anthologies by Régis Debray and Denis Roche 71
4 Distance and Self in Raymond Depardon’s Errance 84
5 Regards croisés: The Moroccan City by Tahar Ben Jelloun 106
6 Fabulation in Fragments: Leïla Sebbar’s Algeria through the
Photography of Marc Garanger 122
7 Patrick Chamoiseau and Rodolphe Hammadi in the Penal
Colony: Photo-text and Memory-traces 140
8 ‘Paradis sans espoir’? Philippe Tagli’s ‘Photo-graffiti’ in the
Parisian Banlieue 156
9 ‘La légende de l’histoire’: Bernard Noël’s Captions for
Photography of the Paris Commune 169
Conclusion: Silence, Orality, History 182
Notes 195
Bibliography 224
Index 239

Acknowledgements
A number of people helped to secure the study leave in which to complete
this book: Lorna Milne, Douglas Smith and David Platten. Gratitude
must go also to the Arts Faculty and the School of Modern Languages
and Cultures at the University of Leeds, not to mention colleagues in
French Studies, who kindly allowed me the space. Papers given at various
seminars, conferences and workshops were helpful occasions to try out
ideas. My thanks then to: Colette Wilson and willing participants in the
Photography seminar at the Institute of Romance and Germanic Studies
(May 2007); colleagues involved in the first University of Durham work-
shop on photography (March 2004); organisers of French Studies
conference in Leeds (July 2005) and ‘Paris Topographies’ at the
University of Glasgow (September 2003); Mick Gidley and the ‘Writing
with Light’ symposium at Leeds (September 2007); Jane Hiddleston and
the Oxford Postcolonial Studies Group (April 2008); and colleagues
involved in conferences at the University of Amsterdam (April 2008) and
the University of Meknes-Moulay Ismail (November 2008).
The students at Leeds in the ‘Camera Lucida’ seminar (especially in
2007–2008) and the Masters students of 2006–2007 (especially Robert
Watson) were willing and patient participants. Ann Farr and staff at the
Brotherton University Library in Leeds, and Anne Sanciaud-Azanza at
the ‘Estampes’ section of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, have all
provided excellent bibliographical support and advice. As have, in a more
informal way, Françoise Coquet and David Steel, Mike Weaver, Patrick
Crowley, Agnès Calatayud, Geoff Woollen, Maeve McCusker,
Abderrahim Kamal, Bruno Levasseur and Martine Bouchier. Special
mention must be made of Nigel Saint for his expertise, of Roxane Jubert
for her accuracy, and of Thami Benkhirane for squidgy pavements and
‘thamitié’. Anne-Marie Garat and Raymond Depardon, to my great
pleasure, have both been extremely helpful with photographic illustra-
tions. Finally, I would like to thank for their collegiality and friendship:
Nina Sutherland, Iain Mossman, Naaman Kessous, Galin Tihanov, Thea
Pitman and Charles Forsdick.
A number of chapters in this volume have appeared elsewhere in jour-
nals. Chapter 8 was published in Irish Journal of French Studies, for a
vii
viii Acknowledgements
special issue on ‘Cultural Topographies of Paris’ (no. 6, 2006); Chapter
7 in Postcolonial Studies Journal 11:1 (2008); and Chapter 9 in
Contemporary French and Francophone Studies10:3, special number on
the ‘Visual, Verbal, Virtual’ (September 2006). Small sections of Chapter
6 appeared in L. Milne (ed), Postcolonial Violence, Culture and Identity
in Francophone Africa and the Antilles(Peter Lang, 2007), and parts of
Chapter 1 in C. Forsdick and A. Stafford, The Modern Essay in French:
Movement, Instability, Performance(Peter Lang, 2005). I am grateful to
all concerned for allowing permission to reproduce this material, and to
Anthony Cond and Helen Tookey at Liverpool University Press.
Roland Barthes famously described in 1979 how he had an ‘intense
pleasure’ in adding text to photograph.1I realize now that my own entry
into the photo-text world has a far more prosaic and humble pedigree.
As a student in the early 1980s, I had a summer job in Reading for
‘Prontaprint’, which consisted of my matching customers’ developed but
misplaced photographs according to their (often hilarious) descriptions
of what they remembered to be in each of the lost photographs. Needless
to say, the prurience contained in holiday and personal snaps was no
match for the inter-medial and aesthetic gains that the task offered to the
operator whose job was to join image to text.
1See the interview with Barthes just before his death in Le photographe(February
1980), republished in Œuvres complètes,vol.3, p. 1239.
List of Illustrations
Figure 1. Anonymous, ‘Mme veuve B.’, in Anne-Marie Garat,
Photos de familles(Paris: Seuil, 1994), copyright Les Editions
du Seuil. 64
Figure 2. Raymond Depardon, untitled, in Raymond Depardon,
Errance(Paris: Seuil, 2000), copyright Les Editions du Seuil. 87
Figure 3. Raymond Depardon, untitled, in Raymond Depardon,
Errance(Paris: Seuil, 2000), copyright Les Editions du Seuil. 87
Figure 4. Rodolphe Hammadi, untitled, in Patrick Chamoiseau
and Rodolphe Hammadi, Guyane. Traces-mémoires du bagne
(Paris: Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites,
1994), copyright Centre des monuments nationaux. 147
Figure 5. Rodolphe Hammadi, untitled, in Patrick Chamoiseau
and Rodolphe Hammadi, Guyane. Traces-mémoires du bagne
(Paris: Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites,
1994), copyright Centre des monuments nationaux. 149
Figure 6. Philippe Tagli,untitled, in Philippe Tagli,Paradis sans
espoir(Paris: le cherche-midi éditeur, 1998), copyright le
cherche-midi éditeur. 164
Figure 7. Philippe Tagli,untitled, in Philippe Tagli,Paradis sans
espoir(Paris: le cherche-midi éditeur, 1998), copyright le
cherche-midi éditeur. 164
Figure 8. (Attributed to) Bruno Braquehais, ‘La place Vendôme
après la démolition de la colonne Vendôme’, in Bernard Noël,
La Commune(Paris: Nathan/Photopoche, 1998), copyright
Bibliothèque Nationale de France. 178
ix