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Kafka and Photography

Understanding Kafka's fascination with the visual medium

Carolin Duttlinger author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:6th Dec '07

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Kafka and Photography cover

This insightful study explores the intricate relationship between Franz Kafka and photography, revealing its significant influence on his literary works. Kafka and Photography offers fresh interpretations.

In Kafka and Photography, Carolin Duttlinger delves into Franz Kafka's complex relationship with photography, a medium that intrigued him throughout his life. This detailed study presents a close examination of Kafka's most significant prose works, alongside his letters and diaries, illustrating how photography encapsulated both the allure and the challenges of modern existence for the writer. With over 20 illustrations, the book highlights Kafka's personal engagement as a viewer, collector, and amateur photographer, revealing the multifaceted ways photography influenced his literary output.

The author explores how photography serves as a recurring theme in Kafka's texts, reflecting his broader relationship with visuality. By systematically analyzing Kafka's use of photographs as literary source material, Kafka and Photography provides a fresh perspective on his writing, uncovering new insights into familiar works. Duttlinger's chronological approach to Kafka's key prose and personal writings makes this study accessible to both students and general readers, while also appealing to literary scholars and those in photography and cultural studies.

Set against a well-documented historical backdrop, the book emphasizes Kafka's engagement with contemporary culture through a variety of visual materials, some of which have only recently come to light. Ultimately, Kafka and Photography demonstrates the profound influence of photography on Kafka's literary imagination, shedding light on the enigmatic visual details that characterize his narratives and inviting readers to reconsider his work in the context of modernity.

Carolin Duttlinger discusses Kafka's photographs...and their origins, drawing on the writings of Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer as well as Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag. But the great strength of her book lies in the fact that the theory and history of photography as a key medium of modernity forms only the framework of her argument. Within this framework we see a literary critic at work who approaches her material using her own methodology: that of philology. Lothar Muller, Suddeutsche Zeitung In a series of at times stunning textual and visual analyses, Carolin Duttlinger demonstrates that Kafka's writing was to a great extent inspired by a rich archive of visual material...Duttlinger's book offers a meticulous excavation of a 'little' history of photography from Kafka's writing while, at the same time, weaving the compelling and lucid narrative of a writer's visual imagination in a way that is a true pleasure to read and follow at every stage. This is an exceptional study that provides important insights into the relationship between literature and media technology and should open further avenues for reading Kafka's work in the context of media studies. Markus Zisselsberger, The Modern Language Review Dutlinger's book offers a meticulous excavation of a 'little' history of photgraphy from Kafka's writing while, at the same time, weaving the compelling and lucid narrative of a writer's visual imagination in a way that is true pleasure to read and follow at every stage MLR As Duttlinger convincingly demonstrates, photography is a central theme in Kafka's writings of all periods as well as a key metaphor for Kafka's literary approach...This study doubtlessly offers a vital contribution to existing research and sets new standards in Kafka scholarship, as well as providing an indispensible account of the media-historical background, context and sources which shaped Kafka's writing. Silke Horstkotte, IASLonline the author admirably locates and cogently translates key texts in which Kafka turns to photography

ISBN: 9780199219452

Dimensions: 222mm x 145mm x 15mm

Weight: 524g

296 pages