James Joyce and Photography

James Joyce and Photography is the first book to explore in-depth James Joyce's engagement with the art of photography. Photography is evident throughout Joyce's texts, from his narrator's furtive photographic framing in Silhouettes (c. 1897), to the aggressively-minded snapshots captured by the 'Tulloch-Turnbull girl with her coldblood kodak' in Finnegans Wake. Through an exploration of Joyce's manuscripts and photographic and newspaper archival material, as well as the full range of Joyce's major works, this book sheds new light on his relationship with the visual medium, both in a personal capacity and as a means of professional promotion. In taking Joyce's intention in Dubliners to 'betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city' as key to his engagement with visual culture, this work shows how photography in Joyce's writing occupies a particular dual position, shifting between the stasis of portraiture and the kinesis of film.