| Abstract: | Abstract The visual-verbal world of discursive topography will see few readings as valuable as that of the photographer Brassal developing his image of the past century's foremost autobiographer. That Proust and photography are inextricably bound rings tme to any careful reader of In Search if Lost Time. Brassal has placed a quote in the opening epigraph that captures, in a few words, the essential relationship between writing, reading, seeing, and personal interaction. Proust and photography together show how other people and their images, developed in the mind's eye, contribute autobiographically to a more extensive and composite notion of the subject as it seeks to re-create itself through barriers of time and space. As the author/ photographer of The Secret Paris if the 1930s (Gallimard 1976), Brassaï is well acquainted with the ins and outs of society, its margins and centre, the necessity and means of penetrating into personal portraits and sacred spaces where what is seen is rarely told. His vision of Proust as read in this book is replete with insight, both technical and psychological, as the photographer guides the reader through the universe of the ocular writer, opening doors, windows, and fields of vision that permit recorded views and stolen glimpses. |
