Photography-Embedded Literature 2000-2004

Here is my bibliography of works of fiction and poetry published in the years 2000-2004 containing embedded photographs.  You can see bibliographies for other years underneath the pull-down menu “Photo-Embedded Literature” at the top of Vertigo. I continue to these lists as I learn of new books.  If you know of a book that I have not mentioned, please let me know in a comment.  [Last updated: January 30, 2023.]

Pierre Alferi. OXO. Providence: Burning Deck, 2004. From the back cover: “A bouillon cube (literally), a conceptual cube (seven sections of seven poems, with each poem composed of seven lines of seven syllables) and at the same time a ‘flip-book’ of verbal snapshots of life in Paris in the late twentieth century: its tourists, its homeless, its politicians, its TV news, its poetry, its pigeons…” In the middle of the book are seven black-and-white photographs by Suzanne Doppelt.

Louis Aragon, Benjamin Péret & Man Ray. 1929. Paris: Edition Allia, 2004. Erotic poems by Aragon and Péret, with four b&w explicit photographs by Man Ray. Reprint of a very limited edition of 215 copies published in 1929.

Mario Bellatin. Shiki Nagaoka: Una Nariz de Ficción. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2001. A faux biography of a non-existent author, complete with photographic documentation of Nagaoka’s life. Translated into English in 2013 as Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction.

Edward Carey.  Alva & Irva: The Twins Who Saved a City.  NY: Harcourt and London: Picador, 2003.  Sixteen photographs credited to Tom Langdon, all of a sculpture created for expressly for the novel.

Bernardo Carvalho.  Nove Noites. Brazil: Editore Companhia das Letras, 2002.  Published in English as Nine Nights in 2007 by William Heinemann (London).   Contains two archival photographs.  Here is my post about this book.

Brian Castro.  Shanghai Dancing.  Newcastle, Australia: Giramondo, 2003.  A multi-generational family story.  Contains forty-four uncredited photographs, mostly period snapshots and studio portraits from the early twentieth century.

Javier Cercas. Soldados de Salamina. Barcelona: Tusquets, 2001. A novel based on a true story during the Spanish Civil War. Contains a single photograph of a hand-written note. Translated into English in 2004 as Soldiers of Salamis.

Javier Cercas. Soldiers of Salamis. NY: Bloomsbury, 2004. A novel based on a true story during the Spanish Civil War. Contains a single photograph of a hand-written note. From the 2001 Spanish original Soldados de Salamina.

David Charters.  At Bonus Time, No-one Can Hear You Scream.  London: Elliot & Charters, 2004.  The twenty-three photographs by Alice Rosenbaum use selective focus, reflections, unusual cropping, and other dramatic visual techniques to represent the novel’s alienating representation of the money-obsessed environment of London’s City.

Mark Z. Danielewski.  House of Leaves.  NY: Pantheon, 2000.  A novel about a photographer who moves into a house that seems to have different inner dimensions that outer ones.  Contains a number of unattributed photographs in the Appendices sections.

Lisa Deharme and Claude Cahun. Le Coeur de Pic. Nantes: éditions MeMo, 2004. A republication of the exceedingly rare 1937 children’s book, which contains thirty-two poems by Deharme and twenty photographs by Cahun (Lucy Schwob).

Daša Drndiƈ. Leica Format. Zagreb: Meandar, 2003. The Croatian original of Drndiƈ ‘s novel, which was translated into English in 2015. Drndiƈ incorporates multiple voices and extensive quotations from many authors including Shakespeare, Poe, Yeats, Calvino, Pessoa, and Bernhard to build up a narrative about history, memory and forgetting, responsibility, and much more. Includes three photographs and a drawing.

Umberto Eco.  La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana.  Milan: Bompiani, 2004.  Eco’s book is filled with scores of images drawn from popular culture, such as book covers, movie stills & posters, postage stamps, comic books, and more.  Published in English under the title The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana in 2005 by Harcourt.

Michel Faber.  The One Hundred Ninety-Nine Steps.  Edinburgh: Canongate, 2001.  This, the true first edition, has eight color photographs credited to the author, Eva Youren, and Keith Wilson.  A woman joins an archaeological dig in an attempt to escape her nightmarish dreams, but finds herself trying to understand a historical mystery that arises there.  The photographs provide moody images of Whitby Abbey and other nearby sites where the novel takes place.  Later editions apparently do not include the photographs.

Mark Haddon.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.  Oxford: David Fickling Books and London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.  [Apparently a simultaneous release of first editions – one aimed at an adult readership, one for a young adult readership.]  Although the book includes a variety of images – mostly hand-drawn – there is one photograph of “the Cottingley Fairies,” a famous photographic hoax perpetuated by two young girls (Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths) in 1917, a photograph famously believed to be true by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

James Hamilton-Paterson. Loving Monsters.London: Granta, 2001.In this novel, the narrator listens as a man recounts his exotic life story in London and colonial Egypt, which the narrator begins to turn into a biography, creating a multi-layered account of a life. Contains twelve uncredited, (mostly) historical photographs.

Jana Harris. We Never Speak of It: Idaho-Wyoming Poems, 1889-90. Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 2003. Harris’ poems are “dramatic monologues” drawn from the stories of western settlers. They are interspersed with 25 b&w historical photographs of the American west, credited to various sources.

Juan Felipe Herrera. Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. Journal entries and poems with seventeen b&w family snapshots.

Barbara Hodgson.  Hippolyte’s Island.  San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001.  An illustrated novel about mysterious islands in the South Atlantic.  Many images, some photographic.

Barbara Hodgson.  Lives of Shadows.  San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004.   Many, many illustrations of all types, including historic photographs of Damascus.

Robert Hough. The Final Confession of Mabel Stark. NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001. This fictionalized story of “the greatest female tiger trainer in history” uses five photographs from the archives of the Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin.

David Howard and Fiona Pardington.  How To Occupy Our Selves.  Wellington, NZ: HeadworX, 2003.  Poems by Howard with a portfolio of sixteen sepia-toned photographs by Pardington in the center of the book.  According to David Howard’s Acknowledgements, Pardington devoted “two years to photographing in response to inchoate drafts” of Howard’s poems.

HOWE, Susan. Kidnapped. Clonmel: Coracle, 2002. Described as “A dense mélange of memoir, essay, and poetry.” Photographs by Susan Howe and her third husband Peter Hare (1935-2008). A limited edition of 300 copies. An early version of her 2003 book The Midnight.

Susan Howe.  The Midnight.  NY: New Directions, 2003.  Poems and texts.  Contains many photographs, credited to various sources and Peter Hare.  Here is a link to all of my posts on several books by Susan Howe.

Pawel Huelle.  Mercedes-Benz.  Crakow: Wydawnictwo/ZNAK, 2002.  This Polish-language novel is a paean to the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, written in the form of a series of letters to Hrabal as the author takes driving lessons in Gdansk.  Previous family-owned cars provide the structure for telling family stories that span much of twentieth-century Poland.  Contains seven vintage snapshots that appear to be of the author’s own family, along with one reproduction of a vintage Gevaert film advertisement. Published in English under the same title in 2005 by Serpent’s Tail (London).

Alexander Kluge. The Devil’s Bind Spot. NY: New Directions, 2004. Stories with some photographs. This English translation by Martin Chalmers and Michael Hulse contains 173 of the 500 stories from the original 2002 German edition titled Die Lücke, die der Teufel lässt.

Paul LaFarge. Haussmann, or the Distinction. NY: Picador, 2002. LaFarge’s novel about Baron Haussmann and his redevelopment of Paris contains three historic, but uncredited photographs from the collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

Tan Lin. “Mary Mary Ellen Ellen.” In Conjunctions 38 (2002). A short story with a number of uncredited photographs.

Micheline Aharonian Marcom.  Three Apples Fell from Heaven.  NY: Riverhead Books, 2001.  Contains a single, uncredited historic photograph opposite the Contents page.  Here is a link to my post on this book.

Micheline Aharonian Marcom.  The Daydreaming Boy.  NY: Riverhead Books, 2004.  Contains a single, uncredited photograph.

Javier Marias. Dark Back of Time. NY: Random House, 2001. Translated by Esther Allen from the 1998 Spanish original Negra Espalda del Tiempo. Here, Marias claims to tell us “what really happened” in his “Oxford Novel,” All Souls (2002) Todas las Almas (1989). We learn who some of the original characters were (and were not) based on, as well as some anecdotes about Marias’ book collecting habits and a few other oddities tangentially related to the earlier book. With numerous photographs (mostly historic portraits and images of documents).

Javier Marias.  Fiebre y Lanza.  Madrid: Alfaguara, 2002.  Contains several reproductions of posters and documents and a single photograph.  Translated into English in 2005 under the title Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear.  I wrote about the book here.  This is the first volume of a three-volume novel.

Melania G. Mazzucco.  Vita.  Milan: Rizzoli, 2003.  Contains family photographs as well as archival photographs from Italian collections.  First published in English in 2005 under the same title by Farra, Straus & Giroux.   Here is a link to my post on this book.

Marie NDiaye. Autoportrait en Vert. Paris: Mercure de France, 2004. A slim novel with numerous photographs in color and in b&w. Published in Jordan Stump’s English translation by Influx Press (Great Britain) and Two Lines Press (U.S.) in 2014, probably without the photographs.

Marilyn Nelson. Carver: A Life in Poems. Asheville: Front Street, 2001. A series of poems about George Washington Carver, illustrated with 33 b&w historical photographs credited to various sources. The photographs include portraits of Carver and his family, some of Carver’s personal possessions, Tuskegee Institute, and the South in general (such as an image of Ku Klux Klan members).

Lance Olsen and Andi Olsen. Sewing Shut My Eyes. Tallahassee: FC2, 2000. Nine dark “fictions” by Lance Olsen, along with a number of full page “computer visuals” by his wife Andi, which are b&w photographic images overlaid with a variety of texts.

Lance Olsen.  Girl Imagined By Chance.  Normal, IL: FC2, 2002.  Twelve snapshots appear “taped” to the pages of the book at the beginning of each chapter and are central to this novel about representation. “Photographs created and manipulated by Andi and Lance Olsen.”

Angharad Price. O! tyn y gorchudd. Ceredigion, Wales: Gomer, 2002. This fictional biography of a real woman contains ten historic photographs taken by “Angharad Price and family” (Price is the great-niece of Rebecca Jones, the subject of her novel). For an English translation, see my listing under the title The Life of Rebecca Jones for the year 2012.

Claudia Rankine. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. St. Paul: Graywolf, 2004. Poetry with numerous uncredited photographs.

Selah Saterstrom. The Pink Institution. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press,, 2004.  Saterstrom’s poetic work of fiction work about four generations of a dysfunctional family includes six small b&w photographs (presumably by the author).

Leslie Scalapino.  Dahlia’s Iris: Secret Autobiography + Fiction.  Normal,  IL: Fiction Collective 2, 2003.  Contains seven photographs by the author and several “doodles” (collages) by Marina Adams.

Leslie Scalapino & Marina Adams.  The Tango.  NY: Granary Books, 2001.  Poetry with photographs credited to Scalapino and other artwork by Adams.  Here is a link to my posts on several books by Leslie Scalapino, including Tango.

W.G. Sebald.  Austerlitz.  Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2001.  Contains numerous photographs.  Published in English under the same title in the same year by Hamish Hamilton (London).  Here is a link to all of my posts on Austerlitz.

Eleni Sikelianos.  The California Poem. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2004. In this book-length poem, there are numerous reproductions that include photographs, drawings, and a painting, all credited to various sources.

Iain Sinclair.  Dining on Stones or, The Middle Ground.  London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004.  Contains six uncredited historic photographs.  Here is a link to all of my posts on several books by Iain Sinclair.

Iain Sinclair.  Landor’s Tower.  London: Granta, 2001.  Contains illustrations that are a combination of drawing and photography by Dave McKean.

Jo Soares. Twelve Fingers: Biography of an Anarchist. NY: Pantheon, 2001.  A translation of the 1998 Portuguese original O homen que matou Getulio Vargas. This fictional biography of a would-be assassin, who, among other things, helps start World War I, contains forty-eight b&w illustrations, most of which are photographs.

Jindřich Štyrský.  Emilie přichází ke mně ve snu.  Prague: Torst, 2001.  Facsimile of the exceedingly rare 1933 edition of a text and erotic photomontages.  This facsimile edition contains a new Epilogue by Karol Srp, in Czech.  Published in English as Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream in 1997 by Ubu Gallery (New York).

Jonathan Tel.  Freud’s Alphabet.  London: Scribner, 2003.    With six photographs credited to the Freud Museum and the Imperial War Museum.  An American edition was published the same year by Counterpart (New York).  Here is a link to all of my posts on several books by Jonathan Tel.

Jon Thompson. The Book of the Floating World. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2004. Jon Thompson uses four b&w photographs taken in Occupied Japan by his father, William J. Thompson, as “points of departure” for his poems.

Steve Tomasula and Stephen Farrell. Vas: An Opera in Flatland. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002. A classic image-text work, Vas is superficially about Square and his wife Circle and their daughter Oval, who live in the two-dimensional world of Edwin A. Abbot’s book Flatland (1884). Circle has asked Square to undergo a vasectomy, which leads to a very extended set of diversions into the science of genetics and the history and pseudoscience of eugenics, among other things. Farrell is responsible for the “art & design” of the book, which includes innovative typography and all sorts of imagery, including photographs.

C.D. Wright and Deborah Luster. One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana. Santa Fe: Twin Palms, 2003. In 1998 photographer Deborah Luster and poet C.D. Wright set out to produce a record of Louisiana’s prison population through image and text. Luster’s stark, warm portraits were made against a completely black background, letting each individual become who they wanted to be for the camera. Wright’s poems are made up of fragments of speech, of signs, and other things she observed in and around the prisons. Her poems were later published in 2007 without Luster’s photographs by Copper Canyon Press.