Photography as fiction-image in Alice in Wonderland, by Suzy Lee

Abstract

The present paper aims to reflect on the choice of photography as a constitutive and potential element of Suzy Lee’s Alice in Wonderland (2002) pictorial narrative. In her first picture-book, the South Korean book artist uses photographic visual language to structure and record some revelation/ forgery games in images that flash incessantly representifications to Lewis Carroll’s classic title of Children’s Literature. Reflecting on this process of imaginary fictionalization, we take the recent writings of Philippe Dubois (2016, 2017) on the concept of fiction-image, an exponential aspect in the field of contemporary art photography. And to help us out thinking about the sensible repositioning of the look proposed by Suzy Lee’s hybrid book – among the literary, plastic, photographic arts –, we’ve looked for Georges Didi-Huberman’s writings (2010, 2013, 2015, 2017) on the double distance comprehension and the montage as thresholds that erupt before the reader, child, young adult, or adult, producing defamiliarization to his experience with the work of art’s aura.