ABSTRACT
One of the first photographs made using the negative/positive system was a photogenic drawing of the alphabet by William Henry Fox Talbot, written out in his own hand. His decision to use the new visual representation system that his scientific research had helped to discover as a means to record in a single image a complete example of a pre-existing set of symbols gave an early indication of the intricate webs of relations which were to develop between writing and photography. Photography is only one of many systems of visual representation that Proust exploited in his search for sources of metaphor and analogy suitable for communicating Marcel's and the later narrator's divergent visions of the world and experience. Action in the present is fundamental if Marcel is to realize his vocation as a writer, and ultimately he does recognize that fulfilment is possible if he draws on his personal history.
