“A time bomb in the cupboard”: style and photographic objectivity in Penelope Lively”s The Photograph.

Photographs in fiction can be exploited as samplings of past actions, past lives and historical events, and their symbolic and iconic role is used to catalyse and condense significant aspects of the plot. By positioning pictures in the narrative, writers fix moments in the fictional life of the characters to confront the external experiences of the readers. Time, memory, domesticity, trauma may all be described by exploiting the photographic medium within a story to stimulate response effectively. In The Photograph , Penelope Lively uses photography to fragment perception. She explores singular points of view on visual, verbal and recollected narration. Traditional expectations for photography’s realism are presented as something that creates a constant sense of uncertainty. The photograph muddles everything the characters had previously thought real. Rather than stabilising identity, the photograph confounds perception and imagination; it assembles inexpressible truths, unfulfilled desires, and wishes. Visual and verbal representation strategies interweave to create a hybrid genre-bending mosaic, thus creating a postmodern text that questions photographic truth. The article examines the notion of untruth in relation to photography and illustrates the function of the photograph as a stylistic and linguistic device that explains the idea of untruth within the narrative. The novel describes the negotiation between photography as a description of reality and photography as a re-invention of authenticity. It is Lively’s postmodern style that extends visual perception to unveil potential meanings. Its un-truth proves to be a powerful means of persuasion beyond any aesthetic function of narrative.