Manifestations of Phototext as Hybrid Narratives in Biographies of Ingeborg Bachmann and Sylvia Plath

Abstract

Jefferson Hunter introduced the term phototext in 1987 to describe a combination of words and photographic images, in which both parts ‘contribute equally to their meaning’. This paper argues that photographs in biographies, although commonly considered to illustrate or support the biographical text, form an inseparable union with the words that accompany them – a phototext. I therefore develop Hunter’s concept by using the term phototext to denote not only ‘composite publications’ but also other forms of combinations between photographs and words, namely ekphrasis and delayed connections, where image and text are separated. By looking at two frequently portrayed women writers – Sylvia Plath and Ingeborg Bachmann – this paper analyses common patterns of biographical phototexts. I have chosen one photograph of each writer, which is imprinted or referred to in at least two books, to explain the workings of such hybrid narratives. Together, these phototexts form an interacting net of correspondences across the biographies. Phototextual patterns focus on topics that cannot easily be represented by words only, for example the condition of the author’s body or spatial settings, and therefore cause a shift in the bimedia (im)balance. By applying the concept of phototext on literary biographies, the article shows how they stage not only images of Bachmann and Plath – both literal and metaphorical – but also images of women writers in general. The intermedial approach can disclose the biographer’s strategy of representing the writer.