
Journeys Exposed
Women's Writing, Photography, and Mobility
Giorgia Alu(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 22. August 2018
Book
Hardback
220 pages
978-1-138-34502-7 (ISBN)
Description
Journeys Exposed: Women's Writing, Photography and Mobility examines contemporary literature written by women that are all related to Italy in different ways. It argues that photography provides women with a means to expose aspects of their nomadic self and of others' mobile lives within and beyond the writing process. By resorting to the visual, women individualistically respond to forms of hegemonic power, fragmentation, displacement, loss and marginality and make these experiences key to their creative production.
Reviews / Votes
"How does the intersection of writing and photography make women's lives visible and create new ways of seeing for women? Dwelling in the space that at once joins and separates word and image, Giorgia Alu offers a compelling and original exploration of little-known women writers and photographers who entertain diverse relationships with Italy as native insiders, naturalized outsiders and emigres. At once illuminating in its formal analysis and passionate in the exploration of complex life stories, the book's reflection on female identity as a fluid act of journeying across social, cultural and national boundaries breaks new ground in interdisciplinary and visual studies."- Giuliana Minghelli, Associate Professor, McGill University
"Journeys Exposed: Women's Writing, Photography and Mobility is a fascinating study of several contemporary women writers, all related to Italy in different ways, whose work combines writing with photography in extraordinarily inventive ways to narrate the female, mobile self. Alu ranges boldly across a wide variety of genres and media - diverse forms of photography and writing, but also tapestries, lace, scars on skin, and film - to discuss the diverse ways in which these women create, narrate and re-present their selves as they travel through space and time. The selection of authors is highly original, covering a richly varied selection of relationships to Italy as well as combinations of representational approach: the Italian novelist Melania Mazzucco, the Italophone Albanian writer and photographer Ornela Vorpsi, and the originally Polish anthropologist, documentary maker and photographer Monika Bulaj, who writes in Italian, are just three of the creators to whom Alu introduces her readership. Indeed this book is, amongst other things, a wonderful introduction to contemporary works at the cutting edge of photobiography, as readable as it is well-informed. Alu skilfully threads her argument through these writers' self-narrating works, showing how writing and photography work together to represent 'female mobile subjectivities' that are shaped by experiences of resistance, marginality and displacement. In this she is supported by an eclectic but compelling collection of thinkers such as Adriana Cavarero, Roland Barthes, Theodore Adorno and Rosi Braidotti, especially in the area of photography and image theory. Dealing as it does with both prize-winning writers and little-known works, but based around the topical and significant theme of women's self-writing, this book will find a wide and enthusiastic readership from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines; contemporary Italian Studies, but also Photography Studies, Women's Writing and Visual Culture."
- Akane Kawakami, Reader in Modern French Literature, Birkbeck, University of London
"This volume offers a subtly nuanced and critically sophisticated analysis of a complex nexus: women (both writers and photographers) are at the centre of a web of narratives which range from photographs (real and recounted), fictional writing, biography, and autobiography. Interartistic interconnections, through different modes of representation, are at the core of Alu's new volume which explores how women narrate themselves and others, with a special emphasis on mobility.
Journeys Exposed belongs to a growing scholarly field which explores the relationship between literature and photography, and uses the complex negotiation between words and images as a means to explore gender, and, through it, hegemonic power, fragmentation, displacement, loss and marginality."
- Giuliana Pieri, Professor of Italian and the Visual Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
36 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder
36 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
496 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-138-34502-7 (9781138345027)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
09/2020
1st Edition
Routledge
€55.70
Shipment within 15-20 days

E-Book
09/2018
1st Edition
Routledge
€63.49
Available for download
Person
Giorgia Alu teaches in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney.
Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Narrating, Exposing, Moving
PART I
Performances: Escapes and Resistance
1 Fleeting Photographs and Vanishing Rebels in Melania Mazzucco's Fiction
2 Stranger at Home: Ornela Vorpsi's Visual Writing of Endurance
PART II
Intersections: Itinerancies with a Camera
3 Hidden Lights: Monika Bulaj's Empathic Photo-Reportages of Afghanistan
4 Carla Cerati's Photo-Textual Social and Personal Journeys
PART III
Tapestries: Transits through Origins
5 Re-writing: Narrations of Family Displacement
6 Re-Imaging: Threads, Laces and Stitches
Conclusion: Multiple Exposures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Narrating, Exposing, Moving
PART I
Performances: Escapes and Resistance
1 Fleeting Photographs and Vanishing Rebels in Melania Mazzucco's Fiction
2 Stranger at Home: Ornela Vorpsi's Visual Writing of Endurance
PART II
Intersections: Itinerancies with a Camera
3 Hidden Lights: Monika Bulaj's Empathic Photo-Reportages of Afghanistan
4 Carla Cerati's Photo-Textual Social and Personal Journeys
PART III
Tapestries: Transits through Origins
5 Re-writing: Narrations of Family Displacement
6 Re-Imaging: Threads, Laces and Stitches
Conclusion: Multiple Exposures