Lived Images/Imagined Existences: A Phenomenology of Image Creation in the Works of Michel Tournier and Photography

The act of reading or looking at a work of art is subjective in essence, but then it loses this subjectivity in the process when the subject’s consciousness projects itself into the object of interest, ultimately brought back to the subject as a newly objectified act. It is the purpose of this article to show the relationship between literature and the visual arts by studying their mutual borrowings and thus recognize the valuable critique of phenomenology behind creativity and art reception. To discuss this relationship, I will only consider the medium of photography and the works of the French writer, Michel Tournier. Around the photos of artists such as Eugène Atget, Èdouard Boubat, and Arthur Tress I will apply the terminology of Roland Barthes from his essay Camera Lucida. I will show the technique borrowed from photography that Tournier has adapted to his novels, revealing the hidden from the darkroom of his imagination and developing new ways of seeking identity.