PhotoGraphic Encounters: The Edges and Edginess of Reading Prose Pictures and Visual Fictions

Literacy is broadly understood to refer to the ability to read and write. But the term is heavily value-laden and is often used to elevate print at the expense of other forms of communication. The authors challenge this reductive notion of literacy and propose instead an integrated span of literacies: reaching across disciplinary boundaries to discover a text that draws upon both the visual and the verbal. The book discusses Canadian writers and Canadian artists, then looks at the cross-fertilisation of visual and verbal processes in their works. The authors present a new narrative practice, one that fully engages lived experience. The book offers a compelling perspective on questions of literacy in a post-modern culture. Artists, writers, scholars, and critics alike will want this volume in their libraries. Illustrated with over 120 black-and-white photographs, 20 colour plates, index, bibliography.