Nadar's memoirs have remained relatively obscure (to this day they are still not translated into English) and, when they are read, they generally are understood as a set of rambling anecdotes meant to contribute to Nadar's self-aggrandizement. This lecture will suggest that, instead, each vignette of Nadar's memoirs offers a kind of snapshot-in-prose which, in turn, provides us with an allegory of different characteristics and features of the world of photography, what Nadar calls in a discussion of his aeronautic experiences, the “photographopolis.”
(La conférence sera donnée en anglais, mais la discussion pourra avoir lieu en français.)
Eduardo Cadava teaches in the Department of English at Princeton University. He is the author of Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History and Emerson and the Climates of History, and the co-editor, with Jean-Luc Nancy and Peter Connor, of Who Comes After the Subject?, with Aaron Levy, of Cities Without Citizens and, with Ian Balfour, of a special issue of SAQ entitled And Justice For All?: The Claims of Human Rights. He is currently finishing a collection of essays on the ethics and politics of mourning entitled Of Mourning, and a small book on the relations among music, techniques of memorization, and writing entitled Music on Bones. He also is editing the English translation of Nadar's memoirs, Quand j'etais photographe, and his lecture is drawn from the volume's "Introduction."