Maria João Baltazar

... New York: Phaidon, 2006); Geoffrey Batchen, Yoshiaki Kai and Masashi Kohara, Suspending Time: Life – Photography – Death (Japan: Nohara, 2010). ... Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life (1863)', in The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader, ed. Vanessa R. Schwartz ...

Analysis of Bartleby, a character by Herman Melville (Bartleby, The Scrivener, 1853), in relation to his obstinacy (‘I would prefer not to’), demands reflection on the condition of the photographic image (Gilles Deleuze, ‘Bartleby, ou la formule’, 1989; Giorgio Agamben, ‘Bartleby o della contingenza’, 1993) and understanding of the relevance that contemporary theory has given to the act of vernacular photography (Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not, 2004). This article looks at the interpretation of Bartleby syndrome (Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby y compania, 2000) to represent and obtain visual literacy in the field of photography. The possibility of taking a photograph of this literary character comes close to that of the taking of failed photographs. Like Bartleby, the subject of a failed photograph (unfocussed, un-centred, amongst other errors) does not correspond to common social and individual expectations: they neither conform to a perfect image, nor to socially-widespread models ...

2 Transcrevemos a versão original: “Je suis frappé par le fort pouvoir imaginatif qui surgit chaque fois que nous poursuivons un événement du passé, pour retrouver ce qui a provoqué son émergence. Nous trouvons plutôt notre pouvoir de recréer le passé que le passé proprement dit.” (Amouroux, 2001:30). 3 Segundo o autor: “Dans cette petite vidéo, réalisée d’une certaine manière sans le vouloir, l’espace et le temps se superposent non pas par stratégie, ni planification, mais par nécessité. C’est l’histoire de la maison où je suis né. Les images se rapportent à ma dernière visite.” (Amouroux, 2001:34). A OSCILAÇÃO DA IMAGEM ENTRE FOTOGRAFIA E CINEMA