The Intertwining—The Chiasm

Abstract

The author deploys the notion of embodiment to provide a theoretical framework for a series of autobiographical photographs, Encountering Windrift (2012-2018). Applied to certain modes of autobiographical photography, the theory of embodiment proposed is based upon the notion of the photograph as the embodiment of an encounter between the photographer, the photographed subject, and the viewer. In autobiographical photography the embodied encounter may be heightened by the apparent intimacy between photographer and subject. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's notion of the chiasm and Jill Bennett's notion of an affective transaction serve to support this conception of the photograph as an embodied encounter in that both imply an intertwining of self and other. While the viewer may never be able to access another person's subjective experience directly, certain formal and conceptual approaches to autobiographical photography may enable the viewer's understanding of the photographer's personal experience of space and time, whilst simultaneously triggering their own autobiographical memory.