Anyone who belongs to the large readership of the French Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano knows that sooner or later almost every one of his novels is about photography.
Professional photographers are often part of the ensemble of his characters, or he uses the diverse spectrum of uses of the medium by assigning a structuring function in the narrative process to portraits, passport photos and snapshots.
While photographs are used in the literary tradition from André Breton to W.G. Sebald to confirm the representation's promise of authenticity, Modiano never shows actual images, but limits himself to describing them.
His photo fictions evoke desires, memories and fantasies that go beyond the objective of the photographs.
His characters often cling to images as supposed evidence in a circumstantial process they are conducting to clarify their identity.
The novel “Outskirts” begins with the accidental discovery of an old photograph on which the protagonist recognizes his father, who is a stranger to him.
This discovery becomes the starting point for research that increasingly confronts him with his father's shady past during the years of German occupation in France.
Although the occupation period is one of Modiano's central themes, he has repeatedly pointed out that he does not approach it as a historian, but that it opens up an imaginative space for his literature.
In principle, he has less in mind past things than their traces leading up to the present.
In one of his few interviews, Modiano emphasized that the technique used in the 1946 black-and-white film "Somewhere in the Night" by Joseph Mankiewicz made him realize how the visual arts can create a specific atmosphere on the set through camera and lighting .
Last but not least, Modiano's work captivates by the fact that he succeeds in using linguistic means to achieve a comparable effect, in depicting moods that, according to Otto Friedrich Bollnow, have a world-disclosing function as the "basic constitution of mental life".
In addition, Modiano proves to be an excellent expert on the recent history of film and photography, who also occasionally comments on individual themes in essays.
Real and fictional photographers side by side
reveals its refinement in the details of the development, because the information on Capa's war reporting is just as correct as the information on Wols' work.
In fact, it was first publicly exhibited from January 30 to February 18, 1937 in the renowned photo gallery "Galérie de la Pléiade" under the title "Photographs par Wolf Schulze";
a vintage print called a self-portrait, created around 1940, again shows the shoes by Wols.
reveals its refinement in the details of the development, because the information on Capa's war reporting is just as correct as the information on Wols' work.
In fact, it was first publicly exhibited from January 30 to February 18, 1937 in the renowned photo gallery "Galérie de la Pléiade" under the title "Photographs par Wolf Schulze";
a vintage print called a self-portrait, created around 1940, again shows the shoes by Wols.