When around the middle of the nineteenth century photography emerged as a new technology, a new documentary practice, but also a new medium for artistic expression, its impact on literature was immediate and strong. Photography’s ability to reproduce reality quickly, truthfully and in minute detail, as well as its alleged claim to a greater authenticity than previous forms of visual representation, affected painterly styles and literary realism alike. Photography enchanted many Victorians – but it also disturbed and threatened some. In this proseminar, we will acquaint ourselves with the main features of Victorian photography in the works of photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll and Clementina Hawarden. We will analyze texts by writers such as Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, George Eliot and Amy Levy, which shed light on the ambivalence with which Victorian writers welcomed (or not) photography, how they incorporated photographic features in their texts, and how they addressed the social and cultural changes brought about by photography and its altered perception of “the real”.
- Enseignant·e: Julia Straub