Abstract
Roland Barthes makes it clear in Camera Lucida that the relationship between theatre and photography is the fetish of “loss” and “death”. This extends the essence of photography to the temporal trauma of flow and stillness. As stillness in time is captured by the camera, every shot contains a double death. However, photographers’ bodily intervention not only brings movement in the photo, but also imprints “ruins” on it. As dying things, the intertextuality between the body and the ruins registers the imperceptible process of slow declination of every urban locale in time. Such is a new reflection on space in post-urban photography. Taking Miru Kim’s photography as an example, this article explores how the body becomes the synecdoche for the relationship between photography and death, and rewrites the spatial laws of urban photography since the 20th century; in other words, it has documented the process of loss and declination of the city, forcing buildings to break away from time to question the production of space.
First Page
171
Last Page
184
Recommended Citation
Cai, Xiao. 2021. "Performing the Melancholy of City: Body, Death, and Photography." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 41, (6): pp.171-184. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol41/iss6/11
