ways recognize the limitation of their angles and
acknowledge the paradox of photography as a
silent discourse or a visual text.
The fascination with photography as a discursive
space, a locus of meaning, comes from its direct
physical link to the reality it represents. It is the
presence of the real without being the real itself.
Any other type of representation filters the real
through conventions and styles; photography
frames and reduces the real without changing it.
There is always the possibility for the beholder to
see something in a photograph that the photogra-
phers themselves have not seen. Photographs
always function as a window onto a piece of reality,
an ever searchable space.
The privileged link to the real bestowed on
photographic representation also carries the
unique capability of stopping time. A photograph
is always a moment of the past extended into the
present of the beholder. These two characteristics
account for a fascinating and well documented
relationship between photography and literature.
The art of narrative is, indeed, constantly rework-
ing its treatment of time and space, which are, in a
way, always its primary subjects. Photography as
the raw space for a variety of discourses receives
here, probably, its most extensive exploration.
Indeed, literature addresses photography in a
number of ways, as an element both external to
the text and inherent to it. Photography can be an
archival source of inspiration used as a precursor
to the text. The French naturalist writer Emile
Zola thought that things are not truly seen before
they are photographed. The photograph can also
become a more intimate part of the text while still
not being reproduced in the text. One can conceive
of a narration stemming from specific uses of
photography: technical achievements like the
decomposition of movement, or social practices
like photo displays and photo albums can become
models for the organization of a narrative. A text
then acquires photographic qualities because it
borrows practices attributed to or reminiscent of
a photograph.
]Narrative texts also add new dimensions to the
photographic concept by reinventing or extending its
possibilities. Marguerite Duras’s best known novel
The Lover(1984) is organized around a photograph
that does not exist but that could have been taken,
had one then understood its photographic impor-
tance: the photographic moment emblematizes the
workings of memory, and photography becomes
pure discourse, the space of writing itself. Rarely
does one see actual photographs included in a nar-
rative without being reduced to the rank of illustra-
tion, that is, an addition rather than a necessity. An
equilibrium between photograph and text in the
creation of a narrative is arguably impossible to
achieve. Few narrations have been made that neces-
sitate the collaboration of the accompanying photo-
graphs. A most famous one in the history of
literature is possiblyNadja(1928) by the leader of
the surrealist movement, Andre ́Breton. But, in this
case, the use of photographs in the book stems from
a desire to annihilate language and literature; the
book is therefore staging the heterogeneity of the
mediums rather than creating a collaborative space.
A narrative discourse that tips the balance in favor
of the photographs would be the photo-novel, a
genre still striving for respectability. In the only
extensive study on this genre, Jan Baetens hopes
for the development of a narration in photographs
increasingly free of text and for a re-education of the
reader. Here again we read the malaise in front of
mixed media created by the opposition between text
and photograph. To become their own narrative
space with a fairly consistent reading, the photo-
graphs in a photo-novel need to make concessions,
such as being inscribed in a codified layout, and
softening their time and space referentiality since
the referent is replaced by a staging serving the
narrative. The photographs’ own discourse possibi-
lities are silenced for the purpose of the narrative
since the codes of the expected or recognized staging
replace the immediacy of the photographic message.
Any discursive practice in which the photo-
graph seems to inscribe itself as an interpretable
text tends as a rule to obscure the photograph.
Writing about the uses of photography in dis-
course will always easily be unfair to the visual
hence irreducible and immediate quality of the
photograph. Expository prose is by nature non-
visual; it explains rather than it shows. One needs
to be aware of all the limitations inherent to treat-
ing photographs as texts. If we carefully consider
the metaphors we live by, such as ‘‘you see what I
mean,’’ we realize that the plea for visualization is
actually an acknowledgement of one’s incapacity
to explain. The ‘‘image’’ to be seen, as a metaphor
for global intuitive comprehension, is supposed to
stand for the text, the explanation that should
advantageously replace it. The image, thus, only
serves as a fix when the formulation proves diffi-
cult. Expository prose in the same logic shuns
images since they are crutches when the art of
elucidation fails. A text is a site of manipulations
that one endeavors to disentangle as one deci-
phers a code. On the other hand, the image is a
site of possible illusions and it functions outside
of the mechanisms of comprehension, outside of aDISCURSIVE SPACES