Fathoming Snapshots and Poetry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2010.2.10Keywords:
writing/image, photograph, writing/history, multiple portrait, surprising illuminationAbstract
This paper sets out to examine “Hitler’s First Photograph”, (1986) by the Nobel Prize winning Polish poet Wisława Szymborska as a site of conflict between writing and image. In relying on one captivating photograph, the poem reveals a sense of ambivalence about writing and history, and above all about deceptive surfaces of affirming snapshots. Drawing on Jean Luc Nancy’s insights, the author argues that the visual image makes perceptible what is often identified as impossible to be perceived. In “Hitler’s First Photograph” the poetic regarding of an artless but incontrovertible photograph creates an uneasy multiple portrait that gathers its object and its viewers in a surprising illumination.
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