Re-reading the short story as photograph, and photographic theory

本项目将研究摄影与20世纪70 - 80年代短篇小说之间的相互关系，并将探讨短篇小说的概念（或分数）在摄影的背景下（而不是反对小说），同时也研究当时的短篇小说如何理解摄影在视觉文化中的地位。我的研究将主要集中在1960年代在美国撰写或出版的短篇小说。70年代和80年代这是一个地方和时间的时刻，看到了主流照片杂志的衰落（生活杂志于1972年停止每周出版），以及文学杂志的激增（文学杂志和出版社理事会成立于1967年）。我特别感兴趣的是，在这一时期，摄影是如何在文学中被类比的，以及当摄影本身不再构成壮观的外观时，文学如何评论摄影;当摄影开始失去对公众注意力的购买力时。这个项目的更广泛的影响将是对摄影和短篇小说之间长期存在的动态关系的更全面和更细致的考虑，以及这两种形式继续相互定义和影响的方式。建立在视觉理论家包括Kaja Silverman，Hito Steyerl和乔治Baker的作品基础上，这个跨学科的项目将提供一种方法，以短篇小说是植根于摄影理论，作为一种方式来了解如何讲故事的反应时，照片的地位动摇在尖端的数字时代。此外，这个项目将论证20世纪70年代和80年代的短篇小说不仅处理图像，他们还积极地理论化摄影在图像世界中的意义。研究问题：1.在20世纪70 - 80年代，短篇小说是如何将摄影的意义理论化的？随着摄影的文化地位的转变，短篇小说与摄影的关系如何？2. 20世纪70 - 80年代的短篇小说如何重新概念化外部摄影图像和内部图像制作（记忆，梦想，先入之见，想象力）之间的关系？3.现代短篇小说能被解读为摄影理论本身吗？4.对摄影和短篇小说的跨学科研究是否能更充分地阐明两者？摄影理论是否描述了现代短篇小说是什么？20世纪70年代至80年代的短篇小说是否进一步解释了摄影在数字时代黎明前的意义？

This project will study the interrelation between photography and the short story in the 1970s-80s, and will explore the idea of short-ness (or fractionality) in the context of photography (rather than against the novel), while also investigating how short stories from the time understood photography's status in visual culture.My proposed research will focus primarily on short fiction written or published in the US during the 1970s and 1980s. This was a moment in place and time that saw the decline of the mainstream photo magazine (with Life Magazine ceasing its weekly publication in 1972), alongside the proliferation of the literary magazine (the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses was formed in 1967). I am specifically interested in how photography is analogised in literature during this period, as well as how literature comments upon photography when the photograph itself no longer constitutes a spectacular appearance; when photographs have started to lose their purchase on the public's attention. The wider impact of this project will be a fuller and more nuanced consideration of the longer-standing dynamic relationship between photography and the short story, and the ways in which the two forms continue to define and influence one another.Building on the works of visual theorists including Kaja Silverman, Hito Steyerl, and George Baker, this interdisciplinary project will afford an approach to the short story that is rooted in photographic theory, as a way to understand how storytelling responded when the status of photographs wavered at the cusp of the digital era. Further, this project will argue that short stories from the 1970s and 80s were not only dealing in images, they were actively theorising what photography meant in the image-world.Research questions:1. How did short stories theorise the meaning of photography in the 1970s-80s?; What was the short story's relationship to photography as the latter's cultural status shifted?2. How did 1970s-80s short stories reconceptualise the relationship between external photographic images, and internal image-making (memories, dreams, preconceptions, imagination)?3. Can the modern short story be read as photographic theory in and of itself?4. Does a cross-discipline approach to photography and the short story more fully illuminate both?; Does photographic theory describe what the modern short story is; and do short stories from the 1970s-80s further explicate what photography meant in the predawn of the digital age?