Narrative Personae and Visual Signs: Reading Leonard's Intimate Photo Memoir

Abstract

In this article, the author looks at Joanne Leonard’s Being in Pictures and engages in a critical dialogue with the assemblage of visual and textual narratives that comprise her intimate photo memoir. In doing this, the author draws on Hannah Arendt’s take on narratives as tangible traces of uniqueness and plurality, political traits par excellence in the cultural histories of the human condition. Being aware of her role as a reader|viewer|interpreter of a woman artist’s auto|biographical narratives, the author situates her work within the framework of Peircian and Barthian semiotics, which allows her to move beyond dilemmas of representation or questions of unveiling the real Leonard. The artist is instead configured as a narrative persona, whose narratives respond to three interrelated themes of inquiry—namely, the visualization of spatial technologies, vulnerability, and the gendering of memory.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Joanne Leonard for trusting me to convey some thoughts around her rich and beautiful autobiographical work, and for kindly giving me permission to cite from her work and reproduce her artwork.

Notes

1. “Lines of flight” is a concept from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, denoting a detachment from social, political, and cultural grounds; it is another way of theorizing resistance, as I have discussed elsewhere in my work with women artists (Tamboukou, Fold).

2. For an overview of this debate and discussion of the literature, see, amongst others, Felski; Giles; and Hollows.

3. Elly (Eleanor Rubin) is Leonard's twin sister.