Photographs in Autobiographies: Identities in Progress

This paper will deal with the use of photographs in several French contemporary autobiographies (Roland Barthes, Annie Ernaux, Denis Roche, Hervé Guibert, Marguerite Duras). My aim will be to present this corpus of works grafting photographs onto various kinds of texts, works that can be called photobiographies. In the second part, I will analyse several issues raised by this new literary field. In particular I will explain why the use of photographs changes the forms and the conditions of the autobiographical expression. Indeed, photographs problematize the representation and the construction of personal identities.