Re-writing otherness: Jack London photographer

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between writing, photography and the representation of otherness in Jack London’s The People of the Abyss (1903) and The Cruise of the Snark (1911), the only works illustrated by his own photographs. The first is the report of a six-weeks stay in the East End of London, where he lived with the poor and documented their condition; the second retraces a boat trip in the South Pacific Islands, where he witnessed the effects of colonialism. The purpose is to shed light on London’s unconventional approach towards otherness, as well as on the role of intermediality in these works, ascribable to the genre of phototexts. In stark contrast to the common Western representation of poor and non-white people, the author re-writes their stories in a hybrid transposition on the edge between words and images.