Michael Newman

'Dead Mirrors: relics and photographs in Georges Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte'

The use of photographs of buildings reflected in canals and of reliquaries in Georges Rodenbach’s novel Bruges-la-Morte (1892) is discussed in relation to the fetishism involved in the protagonist’s preservation of his dead wife’s hair, in a story that concerns his desire for her double. As indicated by the prominent motif of the mirror combined with the theme of death and the role of the relic, the narrative of the novel may be interpreted as an allegory of photography.

The Image Beside the Image and the Image Within the Image: Prolegomena to an Approach to the Collages of John Stezaker

The thought of Blanchot is drawn upon to understand the strangeness of image as distinct from object in that it includes a dimension of absence. Philosophy’s to approach in terms of a ground is criticised, and instead through discussion of Stezaker’s work an approach specific to collage is developed in order to understand not only what it means to place in image next to another image, but also to place an image on top of an image, to find another image in an image, and to render the single image a site of potential becomings though intense attention and reverie.