"In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again it you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long."
— Sebald, W. G. (1944-2001)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Hamish Hamilton
Date
2001
Metaphor
"In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again it you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long."
Metaphor in Context
[...] I took hundreds of such photos at Stower Grange, most of them in square format, but it never seemed to me right to turn the viewfinder of my camera on people. In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again it you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long. Gerald enjoyed helping me, and I can still see him, a head shorter than I was, standing beside me in the darkroom, which was dimly illuminated only by the little reddish light, holding the photographs in tweezers and swishing them back and forth in a sink full of water. He often told me about his family on these occasions, and most of all he liked talking about the three homing pigeons who would be expecting his return, he thought, as eagerly as he usually awaited theirs. [...]
(p. 77)
(p. 77)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Modern Library, 2001)
Date of Entry
05/18/2011
