[Commlist] CFP: Journal of Communication and Languages – Photography, Cinema, and the Ghostly

*RCL — Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens / Journal of Communication 
and Languages*

*Call for papers *

*Photography, Cinema, and the Ghostly – RCL n. 53 (Autumn/Winter)*

*Editors:*

*José Bértolo (CEC, U. Lisbon)*

*Margarida Medeiros (ICNOVA — NOVA U. Lisbon)*

*
*

Throughout the nineteenth century, the camera was believed to be a 
diabolical machine that could steal human souls. In one of the most 
notorious texts included in /When I Was a Photographer /(1899), Félix 
Nadar famously described how Honoré de Balzac thought that “each body in 
nature is composed of a series of specters”, and that each “Daguerreian 
operation” would retain one of these spectral layers until the human 
body of the photographed person amounted to nothing.

If on the one hand there was this general idea that photography was a 
“killing instrument”, on the other hand it was clear from the beginning 
that photographs also granted new lives to human beings, animals, 
objects, etc. Being the “perfect” double of what was once seen in the 
visible world, the photograph becomes the space where that which is no 
longer alive can continue to exist. With this in mind, Roland Barthes 
wrote on his /Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography/ (1980) that 
this relatively new and mostly mechanical art form is responsible for 
the “return of the Dead”. Likewise, Susan Sontag (1977) also posited 
that “all photographs are /memento mori/”.

The correlation between photography and death is particularly striking 
in the last decades of the nineteenth century with the emergence of 
spirit photography. Through the extensive use of double exposures, 
William Mumler, William Hope, and others, demonstrated that photography 
not only dealt with physical reality, but could also place itself within 
the realms of imagination, magic and illusion.

Like photography, cinema has since its beginnings been associated with 
spectrality. As early as 1896, Georges Méliès was already directing 
films such as /Le manoir du/ /diable/, where editing tricks were used in 
order to create a supernatural world inhabited by fantastic creatures. 
At the same time, the supposedly realistic films of brothers Lumière 
were also being perceived by some spectators as much more than direct 
and lifelike representations of the world. After watching a Lumière 
program in 1896, Maxim Gorky famously wrote: “Last night I was in the 
Kingdom of Shadows […] It is not life but its shadow, not motion but its 
soundless spectre”.

In the following decades, film critics, film theorists and philosophers 
as different as Ricciotto Canudo, Jean Epstein, Gilles Deleuze or 
Jean-Louis Leutrat explored ghostly metaphors in their inquiries on the 
nature of film. The prime example of this critical tendency occurs in an 
interview published in the /Cahiers du Cinéma/ (2001), in which Jacques 
Derrida, almost a decade past the publication of /Specters of Marx/, 
characterized cinema as a “spectral technique of apparitions”.

In addition, scriptwriters and directors pertaining to different 
historical and cultural contexts are evidently interested in stories in 
which the ghostly, the oneiric and the immaterial play a special part. 
The exploration of such elements is not limited to German Expressionism, 
the American Gothic (Film) tradition of the 1940s, or the Italian 
/Giallo/, also playing an important role in the works of filmmakers as 
distinct and unique as Yevgeni Bauer, Luis Buñuel, Jacques Tourneur, 
Kaneto Shindo, Alain Resnais, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, or Pedro Costa.

Borrowing from several important studies on the ghostly published in the 
wake of the “spectral turn” popularized by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock in 
/Spectral America/ (2004), this thematic issue aims to depart from and 
contribute to an ongoing debate which shows that many areas of 
spectrality in art are yet to explore. This special issue aims to 
reconsider the close link between photography, cinema and the ghostly, 
bringing together traditional and new historical, theoretical and 
philosophical approaches.

Papers can address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

·The nineteenth century, the emergence of new media, and the ghostly 
imagination

·Photography, memory, and death

·Spirit photography

·The ghostly in modern and contemporary photography

·Key issues related to the ontology of the photographic image: 
(un)reality, (im)materiality, (in)visibilitiy and the (un)seen

·Ghostly metaphors in film writing (criticism, theory, philosophy)

·The spectres of digital media and/or film (in photography and/or cinema)

·Experience, perception, subjective images and imagination

·The representation of dreams and hallucinations

·Special effects aiming to enhance the spectral dimension of photography 
and/or film (e.g. double exposure, superimposition, stop trick, rear 
projection, acousmatic sound)

·Ghostly or haunted media in fiction film (photography, radio, the Internet)

·Ghosts across different genres (e.g., horror, melodrama, comedy, war film)

·Critical and contemporary approaches to the concept of /spectrality/

The articles can be written in English, French, or Portuguese, and will 
be subject to a double-blind peer review. They must comply with the 
journal’s submission guidelines and be sent through the OJS platform 
until*May 10^th , 2020*.

For queries, contact the editors José Bértolo ((jlbertolo /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(jlbertolo /at/ gmail.com)>) and/or Margarida Medeiros 
((medeiros.margarida /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(medeiros.margarida /at/ gmail.com)>).

Guidelines for submission and Instructions for authors:

http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/rcl/index.php/rcl/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions 



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