Ghost Image
by Hervé Guibert
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Description
Ghost Image is made up of sixty-three short essays ́meditations, memories, fantasies, and stories bordering on prose poems ́and not a single image. Hervé Guibert ́s brief, literary rumination on photography was written in response to Roland Barthes ́s Camera Lucida, but its deeply personal contents go far beyond that canonical text. Some essays talk of Guibert ́s parents and friends, some describe old family photographs and films, and spinning through them all are reflections on show more remembrance, narcissism, seduction, deception, death, and the phantom images that have been missed. Both a memoir and an exploration of the artistic process, Ghost Image not only reveals Guibert ́s particular experience as a gay artist captivated by the transience and physicality of his media and his life, but also his thoughts on the more technical aspects of his vocation. In one essay, Guibert searches through a cardboard box of family portraits for clues ́answers, or even questions ́about the lives of his parents and more distant relatives. Rifling through vacation snapshots and the autographed images of long-forgotten film stars, Guibert muses, ́I don ́t even recognize the faces, except occasionally that of an aunt or great-aunt, or the thin, fair face of my mother as a young girl. ́ In other essays, he explains how he composes his photographs, and how ́in writing ́he seeks to escape and correct the inherent limits of his technique, to preserve those images lost to his technical failings as a photographer. With strains of Jean Genet and recurring themes that speak to the work of contemporary artists across a range of media, Guibert ́s Ghost Image is a beautifully written, melancholic ode to existence and art forms both fleeting and powerful ́a unique memoir at the nexus of family, memory, desire, and photography. show lessTags
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Member Recommendations
anonymous user Guibert knew Barthes and his book was written as a response to Barthes’ book.
Member Reviews
Trevi parla nell'introduzione di un dialogo fra questo testo (1981) con La camera chiara di Barthes (1980), dialogo che indubbiamente c'è per via di un rimando a R.B. nella parte finale del libro (e perché Guibert aveva letto e recensito il testo dell'altro). E siamo in effetti in luoghi letterari simili, in cui la fotografia non è affrontata nel suo specifico tecnico o con approfondimento di foto e autori (aspetto deludente per le mie aspettative) ma rispetto all'affettività e alle esperienze personali (soprattutto familiari) e alle pulsioni scopiche. In questo senso è in parte simile a La camera chiara, ma di minore spessore intellettuale (per forza, verrebbe sbrigativamente da dire, anche se di Guibert conosco solo le note show more biografiche che chiudono questo volume) e un po' fastidioso per la struttura spezzettata che rompe il ritmo e non approfondisce. Non privo comunque di alcune riflessioni generative. show less
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Author Information
57+ Works 1,418 Members
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Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Green Integer (17)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Ghost Image
- Original title
- L'Image fantôme
- Alternate titles
- L'Image fantome
- Original language
- French
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 102
- Popularity
- 316,661
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.44)
- Languages
- 6 — English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 12
- ASINs
- 3
