ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at both the primary and critical material with the specific link between photography and self-writing in mind, in order to show how Marcel Proust is the unlikely ancestor of Guibert, Ernaux, and Mace in this field. It shows how his references to photographs and the photographic in La Recherche anticipate the metaphorical, analogical, and concrete uses made of the same by the writers who were to come after him, and how, in at least one passage of his novel, he seems to envision his writing as a form of writing with light. The chapter discusses these through three close readings of passages involving photography in La Recherche: a 'photographic' vision of his grandmother; X-rays and composite photographs; and transfiguration of the self through photography as writing. It concludes by explaining the strange ways in which photography has led to a blurring of the boundaries between the novel and reality for certain celebrated readers of Proust.
