Photography in Sebald

A detailed Summary of Photography in Sebald

The art of photography is an important element in W.G. Seabald's novel The Emigrants. The use of photographs is an essential source of support for the main theme in the novel which deals with memories. The implementation of the various photographs in the novel show that Sebald does not take his readers imagination for granted. Sebald presents his readers with images, so that they are able to experience his descriptions of certain events first hand. Although many of the photographs seem almost unimportant to the story, they serve the purpose of showing the reader how simple images can awaken unwanted memories. The Emigrants is a novel that gives the impression of reading someone's personal memoirs; the use of photography also contributes to this feeling because it helps to connect fiction with the feeling of actual accounts of history.

Firstly, Sebald's use of photographs indicates that he does not take his readers' imaginations for granted, therefore he provides them with pictures in order to make sure that they obtain the proper images that he wants them to. Sebald is not sure that people will remember the descriptions that he has accounted in the novel and feels that if the readers are given visual images, they are more lik

The connection between fiction and reality in this novel is very important. Sebald chose to write a fictitious novel that deals with an actual event in history. By adding the photographs into the novel Sebald makes a definite union with his story and reality. When one reads The Emigrants it is almost as if one is delving into the memoirs of real people. The photographs of family members, gravestones and other personal images all give an illusion of reality. Sebald makes the connection between memoirs and photographs in his novel, "...he handed me a brown paper package tied with string containing a number of photograph and almost a hundred pages of hand written memoirs penned by his mother..." (192). This connection in the novel is what makes one able to see The Emigrants as a memoir, therefore possessing stories of the truth rather than the fiction that it is. At the end of the fourth section in the novel the narrator speaks about seeing photographs at an exhibition a year before seeing them now. The pictures are described as being found " in 1987 in a small suitcase, carefully sorted and inscribed, in an antique dealer shop in Vienna, had been taken as personal souvenirs by a book-keeper and financial expert" (236). It is evident that Seabald feels that photographs are valuable, so valuable that people keep them as "souvenirs" and handle them "carefully." The photographs are a means of record keeping to the characters in the novel and to Seabald; because these real images appear in the book, the readers tend to look at them as valuable pieces of history in the lives of the people in the novel.

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Approximate Word count = 1096
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Arts