現代のロマン＝フォト再考――ドゥエイン・マイケルズとソフィ・カル

抄録

Some contemporary photographers, of whom Duane Michals and Sophie Calle are the best known, have produced unique styles of story telling with a series of photographs and texts. Their new roman-photos could be easily compared with the traditional roman-photos, many of which were produced in the 1960s, but such a viewpoint will not necessarily enable us to understand their intentions clearly and place them in the history of twentieth century photography.

After the development of halftone printing, another photographic genre developed called the photo-essay. Life, undoubtedly the most famous American graphic magazine, established and developed this genre. Life’s photo-essays, which also combined a series of photographs and texts, offered reportage as “true” stories. They composed a narrative, and as time went on, began to “create” a narrative, representing a “normal” American life especially after World War II.

The obvious difference between photo-essays and roman-photos is that the former insists on their integrity or pretends to be honest, while the latter do not. Some Duane Michals’s sequences and Sophie Calle’s roman-photos pose a question about the “truth” of photography, when they maintain their ambivalent meanings regarding truth/fiction. In this respect, we can regard their works as the antithesis of photo-essays, and by the same token, of the photojournalism of our times.