The work of James Joyce and Franz Kafka is profoundly influenced by the visual culture of their time, with complex interrelations between vision, technology and narrative Joyce brackets descriptions of photographs with the lyrical fluidity of his prose. In contrast, photography’s ability to blur the distinction between animate and inanimate sights, between movement and stasis helps Kafka to represent the merging of opposites such as sleep and waking, life and death, human and animal in his writing. Both writers recognize how the visual pleasure of photography and cinema also inspires a sense of exposure and vulnerability. Through a comparison of photographic and cinematic techniques and images in Joyce’s Ulysses and Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” we can explore the effects of different visual technologies on the authors’ depiction of the pleasure and anxiety of the spectator/subject.

Although both authors adopt an anti-realist conception of photography, Joyce advocates fluidity in representation and develops a cinematic mode of narration that emphasizes rhythm, movement and organic development rather than mechanical and static vignettes. Joyce was intensely interested in cinema and critics such as Scarlett Baron, Philip Sicker and Thomas L. Burkdall have traced the relations between Joyce’s writing and the emerging medium of film.(1) Photography, on the other hand, with its posing, staging and fixity, is frequently associated with limited perspectives and stereotypes in Joyce’s work.(2) In his early essay “A Portrait of the Artist” (1904), Joyce argued for a mode of narration that presents subtle developments rather than static vignettes. Photography was unable to convey the “individuating rhythm” or “the curve of an emotion” that Joyce describes as necessary for art, nor could a photo do justice to history if “the past assuredly implies a fluid succession of presents.”(3) This response resembles the reaction of impressionist painters to the photograph: “The camera, they believed, was a liar. Its precision was false. Why? Because reality did not consist of static images. Because the camera stops time, which cannot be stopped; because it renders everything in focus (…) Because the eye is not a lens, and the brain is not a machine.”(4) Joyce queried, “Can a photograph be a work of art?” and answered: “A photograph is a disposition of sensible matter and may be so disposed for an aesthetic end but it is not a human disposition of sensible matter. Therefore it is not a work of art.”(5) Photography only offers a mechanical perspective and so it cannot adequately convey emotional flux, revealing the centrality of the “human disposition” for Joyce. As Leopold Bloom says in Ulysses, the photograph “simply wasn`t art in a word” (16.1454-1455)(6); it can achieve aesthetic ends, but it is not art because it cannot represent the rhythmic emotional movement of the human world. There is frequent irony around photographs in Joyce’s work, suggesting his preference for images in motion. Cinema, which combines images for aesthetic effect, comes closer to Joyce’s own narrative technique.

Critics such as Wolfgang Jahn, Malcolm Pasley, Mark Anderson and Hanns Zischler have identified Kafka’s “filmic” idiom,(7) however, unlike Joyce, Kafka also embraced photography as a visual paradigm and productive source of inspiration.(8) Kafka combines the mediums of film and photography in his desire for a new technology that could offer both cinematic motion and the stasis of the photograph. His wish for simultaneous motion and repose can be seen in his response to the Emperor’s Panorama in Friedland: “The pictures [of the panorama are] more alive than in the cinema because they offer the eye all the repose of reality. The cinema communicates the restlessness of its motion to the things pictured in it; the eye’s repose would seem to be more important.”(9) Movement need to be tempered by stillness to convey reality. Kafka then wonders, “Why can`t they combine the cinema and the stereoscope in this way?”(10) This technological fantasy foreshadows Kafka’s own innovative writing technique, which combines cinematic speed and photographic motionlessness.(11) A close, “photographic” focus on particular sights as well as a rapid, cinematic stream of impressions informs Kafka’s narrative style. Indeed, Kafka’s characters suggest the influence of the photograph. As Anderson remarks, “Kafka’s characters emerge in vivid, sharp detail – often ‘present” like photographic likenesses as they execute some striking gesture – but only as partial, flat surfaces without the depth of a past history or individual psychology.”(12) Kafka, like Joyce, uses photographs to question what it means to be human, but his exploration of subjectivity, bodily experience, mental life and intersubjectivity explores the relation between representation and human nature from a posthuman perspective.(13) Joyce inscribes the mechanical revelations of photography within the temporal and emotional framework of human subjectivity, while Kafka allows photographs to challenge received understandings of reality.

In “Nausicaa,” when Gerty MacDowell remembers an aborted group photograph, she carefully lists the participants: “her mother’s birthday that was and Charley was home on his holidays and Tom and Mr. Dignam and Mrs and Patsy and Freddy Dignam and they were to have had a group taken. No-one would have thought the end was so near” (13.316-319). This sentimental vision of the group photo cannot accommodate human mortality. Just as Gerty’s imagined liaison with the “pale, intellectual (…) foreigner” never develops, this photo remains a fantasy because of Paddy Dignam’s sudden death. Gerty’s recollection suggests photography’s inadequacy for Joyce, as death’s interruption emphasizes the precarious relation between photography and memory.

When Gerty fantasizes about her life as a married woman, she imagines “a beautifully appointed drawingroom with pictures and engravings and the photograph of grandpapa Giltrap’s lovely dog Garryowen that almost talked it was so human” (13.213-233). Presumably the photograph itself is responsible for this reassuring impression, for we have just heard in “Cyclops” another account of “the lovely dog,” this time a “bloody mangy mongrel, Garryowen” (12.119-120), a “mangy ravenous brute sniffing and sneezing all round the place and scratching his scabs” (12.485-486). The one consistent feature shared by these representations is the dog’s linguistic ability, as the Citizen starts “talking to him in Irish and the old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera” (12.705-706). A subsequent interpolation actually supports Gerty’s assertion of the almost human dog, as Garryowen becomes a cyanthrope, a human who thinks he is a dog, reciting verse in public (12.712-747). Although Maud Ellman points out that the dog’s true character is indeterminable when filtered through the opposing styles of “Cyclops” and “Nausicaa,”(14) which of the two descriptions is more persuasive, Gerty’s photographic representation or the anonymous narrator’s account? Gerty’s sentimental photograph and the versifying Owen Garry raise questions about subject formation – how do forms of representation imply a certain kind of perceiving, experiencing subject? How do they index ways of seeing and experiencing the world? Joyce shows how forms of representation influence our habits of reception.

According to Sicker, Bloom’s formulates his erotic vision of Gerty MacDowell in distinctly cinematic terms.(15) Gerty, on the other hand, experiences Bloom in relation to photography and celebrity culture. Although Bloom later acknowledges that the young woman returned his gaze: “Saw something in me. Wonder what” (13.833), he never learns that Gerty “could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual face that he was a foreigner, the image of the photo she had of Martin Harvey, the matinée idol,(16) only for the moustache which she preferred because she was not stagestruck ( …) [her fantasy husband actually has a “carefully trimmed sweeping mustache” (13.237)], but she could not see whether he had an aquiline nose or a slightly retrousée from where he was sitting” (13.415-421). Gerty’s inability to interpret and evaluate Bloom’s nose is no accident. Bloom has carefully posed for her, just as she poses for him, and he later thinks, “Didn’t let her see me in profile. Still, you never know” (13.836), suggesting Bloom’s anxiety as spectator-subject.

This fear of becoming a frozen spectacle for others shadows the text. Baron points out how the word “tableau,” evidence of photographic influence, occurs twice in “Nausicaa” – Gerty imagines Cissy Caffrey falling and freezes this image into a photographic still (13.484 – 486) and then adds another word with photographic connotations to confirm an association between fixity, ridicule and photography: “That would have been a very charming exposé for a gentleman like that to witness” (13:487-488). “Tableau” also appears in Bloom’s interior monologue a few pages later as he envisions the stereotyped behavior of chance encounters: (13: 814 – 820).(17) These imaginary photographs arrest time in static tableaux associated with artificiality, shame and cliché.

Unlike these imagined photographic opportunities, actual photographs testify to the material reality of the gradual passage of time through their stains and creases. In “Eumaeus,” the faded photograph of Molly that Bloom shows Stephen may be intended as a seduction tool but it reveals stereotypes and formula as Bloom indicates with his initial questions: “- Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type?” (16.1425 – 1426). The material nature of the photograph clearly informs Stephen’s response: “Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she was in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth, standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of which was In Old Madrid, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her (the lady’s) eyes dark, large, looked at Stephen, about to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin’s premier photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution” (16.1427 - 1436). Stephen identifies a plus sized woman with some perfect teeth whose fleshy charms are enhanced by a revealing gown, who is positioned near a piano displaying a once popular ballad, and he notes the photographer responsible for the portrait. The portrait acts as a repository for adult fantasies. It serves as a blank screen for the projection of stereotypes and identity constructions which are part of a wider collective imagination of the “Spanish type.” This studio portrait becomes a paradigm for “the paradox at the heart of photographic portraiture, whose rituals of self-fashioning resulted in the annihilation of the sitter’s individuality.”(18)

Bloom identifies the woman as his wife but carefully qualifies the photograph as a reliable representation: “Very like her then,” he observes, but adds, “As for the face it was a speaking likeness in expression but it did not do justice to her figure which came in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the best advantage in that getup” (16.1438-1439; 1444-1446). The mechanical vision of the camera and the artificial setting of the studio cannot adequately represent a human being, unlike the marble sculptures that Bloom recollects from the National Museum, “Whereas no photo could because it simply wasn`t art in a word” (16.1454-1455). In spite of the limitations of the photographic medium, Bloom wants to “ leave the likeness there for a few minutes to speak for itself on the plea he so that the other could drink in the beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the camera could not at all do justice to” (16.). Indeed, the material condition of the photo has as much interest for Bloom as the actual image when he views “(…) the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves (…) In fact the slight soiling was only an added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new, much better in fact with the starch out” (16.1464 -1470). The creased and soiled photograph with its “opulent curves” reflecting Molly’s own curves testifies to the passing of time, as the recorded image is in a process of fading which adds to its function as a memory prosthetic. The photograph testifies to impermanence.

Images do not stay static in Ulysses but vividly come to life, like the picture of the bathing nymph given away with the Easter number of the magazine Photo Bits (4.53). Bloom has framed the reproduction “in oak and tinsel” (15.3263) and hung it over his bed. The image confronts him in “Circe” with the accusation: “Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom, and my shame” (15.3264-3265). Compare the animation of this reproduction with the image Gregor Samsa frames in his bedroom and covers with his vermin body.

The monstrous vermin of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” tends to be allegorized away by critics and we actually receive limited information about the creature. As Anderson points out, “Kafka reverses the camera angle, forcing us to see not so much the insect as the world of higher primates from the insect’s perspective”(19) Does the vermin have a human perspective, or does Gregor’s perspective evolve into a posthuman point of view as the story continues? Carolin Duttlinger points out how the photographic portrait and its significance for family power dynamics is a key theme in Kafka’s story. While emphasizing the role of photography for the construction of social, cultural, and personal identity, this story also shows how the power relations and hierarchies informing these constructs can be subverted through images. Duttlinger argues that Gregor Samsa’s previous conformity to photographic frameworks of identity is exploded when he transforms into the monstrous “other” of this order.(20) Only, as Stanley Corngold points out, Gregor is not a clearly defined “other” for either his family or for Kafka’s readers: “The metamorphosis in the Samsa household of man into vermin is unsettling, not only because vermin are disturbing, or because the vivid representation of a human ‘louse’ is disturbing, but because the indeterminate, fluid crossing of a human tenor and a material vehicle is in itself unsettling.”(21) This vermin/human mélange resists human thought and causes pain through its inexplicability. In this sense, Gregor’s consciousness parallels the mechanical vision of a photograph, with its ambivalent condition between familiarity and foreignness.

Gregor’s transformation is carefully framed by images in the story. For example, one testament to his formerly human existence is a photograph, a significant contrast to both his insect self and his previous existence as an exploited travelling salesman: “On the wall directly opposite hung a photograph of Gregor from his army days, in a lieutenant’s uniform, his hand on his sword, a carefree smile on his lips, demanding respect for his bearing and his rank” (12).(22) The photo represents a conflict between individuality and uniformity, as respect and a carefree smile are the result of a lieutenant’s uniform. As Duttlinger observes, the photo is strategically placed opposite the door through which the vermin Gregor first emerges, revealing his new identity to his family.(23)

However, Gregor has carefully framed another illustration, a cut-out magazine picture, within his room:(24) “Over the table, on which an unpacked line of fabric samples was spread out – Samsa was a traveling salesman – hung the picture which he had recently cut out of a glossy magazine and lodged in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady done up in a fur hat and a fur boa, sitting upright and raising up against the viewer a heavy fur muff in which her whole forearm had disappeared” (3). The illustration shows a woman whose body is partially covered by fur, an image which blurs the boundaries between human and animal. Does the hidden, raised forearm represent an aggressive gesture, or the disarming of a fist now muffled by fur?

Both Leopold Bloom and Gregor Samsa have framed images of woman in their bedrooms, giving mass produced images an illusion of singularity. Gregor has framed this image while relaxing from work, as his mother explains to his office manager: “He sits with us at the table, quietly reading the paper or studying train schedules. It’s already a distraction for him when he’s busy working with his fretsaw. For instance, in the span of two or three evenings he carved a little frame. You`ll be amazed how pretty it is; it’s hanging inside his room. You’ll see it right away when Gregor opens the door” (8). The first thing one sees upon entering Gregor’s room is the framed picture of the woman in fur, as if to emphasize its importance for Gregor’s private life.

Later, when his mother and sister remove his belongings from his room to make it easier for the monstrous vermin to move around freely before they turn the room into a storehouse for useless junk: “They were clearing out his room: depriving him of everything that he had loved; (…) And so he broke out – the women were just leaning against the desk in the next room to catch their breath for a minute – changed his course four times, he really didn`t know what to salvage first, then he saw hanging conspicuously on the wall, which was otherwise bare already, the picture of the lady all dressed in furs, hurriedly crawled up on it and pressed himself against the glass, which gave a good surface to stick to and soothed his hot belly. At least no one would take away this picture while Gregor completely covered it up” (26). It is significant that Gregor’s only expression of open rebellion against his family is over this image of a woman “disappearing” into fur. Gregor’s body substitutes for the image in the gilt frame of a woman who may represent animality or transformation. Kafka’s attention to embodiment and materiality with his depiction of a hybrid identity, part human, part animal, suggests Gregor’s escape from the limits of his own human identity as expressed in his soldier photograph.

Gregor replaces the image of the animal-woman with his own monstrous body and we then see how Gregor is indeed stuck with the protocols of representation. After his mother catches sight of Gregor as monstrous vermin, she calls upon God and faints. His sister addresses the framed Gregor for the first time: “You, Gregor!” cried his sister with raised fist and piercing eyes. These were the first words she had addressed directly to him since his metamorphosis. She ran into the next room to get some kind of spirits to revive her mother. Gregor wanted to help too – there was time to rescue the picture – but he was stuck to the glass and had to tear himself loose by force” (27).

The picture of the lady in fur may be a reference to Sasher Masoch’s “Venus in Furs”(25) but it is also an image of transformation where the fist, so prominently displayed by Gregor’s father and even by his sister, disappears into animal fur. This ironic presentation of a magazine image recalls Gerty Macdowell, who also strives for a vision of perfection based on her limited culture and appreciates another romantic illustration, appropriately hanging in the outhouse. (13.331-344).

Both Joyce and Kafka depict imaginative and emotional engagement with photographic images and mechanical reproductions while also pointing to their limitations as tools for visual mastery and self understanding. For Walter Benjamin, photography reveals the “optical unconscious” of reality with details, angles, and perspectives which escape the unmediated human gaze.(26) Joyce rejects the presumption of the image’s transparency and exhaustibility as he emphasizes the importance of human imagination for representation. Kafka explores the radical ambivalence of the photograph and asks us to reflect on the question of “who” experiences. Both authors express anxiety over identity formation through the distorting exposure of photography.