Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The self has been the site of exploration for practitioners across all disciplines. If the philosopher has questioned the ontological value of the self, the artist has deconstructed the self, and the author has written about it in retrospection. We seek for our reflections in the cultural objects of today, but are these not taking us further away from defining ourselves? The advent of photography provided nineteenth century writers with a new set of vocabulary to describe themselves; the language of literature transformed from being imaginative to photographic. Seeing that the Internet has been the next big thing since photography, what kind of transformation will literary forms have to go through, or have they already gone through, to keep up with the digital age? While comparing the self-portrait in photography with that in autobiography, and discussing how both overlap in the genre of photobiography; this paper aims to explore the ways in which technology -since the advent of photography and other media based production and reproduction technologies- has led to an evolution of the literary vocabulary. I intend on further questioning how the unstoppable progress of digitization (or technological advancements) has, continues to, and will continue influencing this literary evolution. From photographic memories to digital archives; the image that once promised reality is now not only photographic, but also digital which opens access to a hyper-reality. Instead of writing about ourselves with photographic detail, are we now thinking digitally?