Resumo:
This dissertation investigates the incorporation of photography into the work of
French writer Annie Ernaux, with a particular focus on L’usage de la photo
(2005), co-authored with photographer Marc Marie, and Os anos (2021). The
aim is to analyze how the image functions as a narrative catalyst, contributing to
mechanisms of memory, subjectivation, and the representation of time (Jordan,
2011). In L’usage de la photo, photography is explored as a trace—however
fragile—of the couple’s intimate and fleeting moments, prompting reflections on
the body, desire, and the transience of lived time. In The Years, although no
photographs are reproduced, visual description serves as an anchoring device
for the autobiographical narrative, which intertwines personal and historical
memories across several decades of the author's life. Drawing on photographic
theory as elaborated by Roland Barthes (2018), Boris Kossoy (2014), and
Jacques Rancière (2021), this dissertation argues that photography, far from
being a mere illustrative resource, establishes in Ernaux’s work a continuous
dialogue between gaze and word, text and image—between what the
photograph reveals and what it conceals. Photography thus emerges not
merely as a record of past events, but as a provocation that challenges the
limits of the image itself (Didi-Huberman, 2018), of narrative (Brizuela, 2014),
and, more broadly, of how artistic fields intersect in contemporary culture
(Escobar, 2004; Krauss, 2022).
