Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory

The cliché says that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s hard to imagine erudite and prolific Janet Malcolm ever letting a photo do all the talking. In the posthumously published Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory, Malcolm pairs a personal photo with small vignettes – snapshots, if you will – of her life: ‘The events of our lives are like photographic negatives. The few that make it into the developing solution and become photographs are what we call our memories.’

The collection starts with the image of a family of Czech Jews. A mrzutý (sullen, sulky, peevish) five-year-old Malcolm standing between her parents on a train, making their way from Prague to New York in 1939, narrowly avoiding the Holocaust. Malcolm goes on to chronicle her childhood in New York, her early love affairs, and her time at William Shawn’s New Yorker, with most pieces accompanied by a photo that sparks and frames a specific memory.

Malcolm disparages the concept of a linear autobiography – ‘The past is a country that issues no visas. We can only enter it illegally’ – and instead provides only small glimpses into her life, turning, however briefly, her analytical gaze on herself.

Admittedly, I wouldn’t recommend this one for new readers of Malcolm. In true journalistic fashion, Malcolm’s writing is more successful when she turns her literary and psychoanalytical eye on another subject. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she tends to be less critical of herself than she is of say, Anna Freud or Ted Hughes. As she herself admits, she ‘would rather flunk a writing test than expose the pathetic secrets of [her] heart.’ Nevertheless, diehard fans, myself included, will find it well worth the read.

Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton