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

本项目将研究20世纪70 -80年代摄影与短篇小说之间的相互关系，并将在摄影的背景下（而不是在小说的背景下）探索短（或分数）的概念，同时也将研究当时的短篇小说如何理解摄影在视觉文化中的地位。我提议的研究将主要集中在20世纪70年代和80年代在美国创作或出版的短篇小说。当时，主流摄影杂志（《生活》杂志在1972年停止了每周出版）正在衰落，而文学杂志却在激增（文学杂志和出版社理事会于1967年成立）。我特别感兴趣的是，在这一时期，摄影是如何被类比于文学的，以及当照片本身不再构成一个壮观的外观时，文学是如何评论摄影的；当照片开始失去购买价值时，公众的注意力就转移了。这个项目更广泛的影响将是对摄影和短篇小说之间长期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。以Kaja Silverman、Hito Steyerl和George Baker等视觉理论家的作品为基础，这个跨学科的项目将为根植于摄影理论的短篇小说提供一种方法，作为一种理解当照片的地位在数字时代的尖端动摇时，讲故事是如何回应的方式。此外，本项目将论证20世纪70年代和80年代的短篇小说不仅涉及图像，它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，短篇小说是如何理论化摄影的意义的？随着摄影的文化地位的转变，短篇小说与摄影的关系是什么？20世纪70 -80年代的短篇小说如何重新定义外部摄影图像与内部图像制作（记忆、梦想、先入为主的观念、想象）之间的关系？现代短篇小说本身是否可以被解读为摄影理论？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？摄影理论描述了现代短篇小说是什么吗？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到来之前的意义？

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?