ABSTRACT
As a preliminary to discussing photobiography, this chapter contextualizes components, photography and autobiography, as they themselves are far from homogeneous categories. It discusses their alleged 'special relationship' with the referent, which is one of the reasons they work together in photobiographic texts, although their respective relationships to the referent have been a source of critical and creative tensions. The chapter develops key concepts that bring together the photographic and autobiographical through discussion of Roland Barthes, an important writer on photography. It analyses Barthes's work, concentrating on key issues arising from it which is useful for analyses of the photobiographies of Hervé Guibert, Annie Ernaux, and Gérard Macé. The chapter explains how the subsequent writers' attempts to depict the self also lead to the possibility of identifying the mother as the self's origin, although none of them develops this theory as insistently as Barthes goes on to do. The chapter provides an overview of the key concepts of the book.
