Photography, Literature, and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Approach for the Representation of the Truth and the Reality

Abstract

The verisimilitude of truth of photography has placed it as an unequalled medium representing and expressing the reality. Yet, its widespread use as an art, the selection and exclusion of certain subjects that may be related to the ideology held by the photographer problematize such assertion. This essay will critically engage, through a few examples, with this difficulty in twentieth century’s context. The problem of photographic representation, say of poverty, or war or labour exploitation will be addressed as in many cases they end up becoming fashionable clichés. While so doing, the essay will show how the use of literary narrative and photographic representation together may address the problem, and that may again confront difficulties in an age ubiquity of images.