Textual Illustration and Adaptation in Two Photopoetic Collaborations: Julia Margaret Cameron’s Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Thoughts of a Night Sea by Lavinia Greenlaw and Garry Fabian Miller

Cet article porte sur deux exemples de collaboration entre un photographe et un poète : les illustrations photographiques de Julia Margaret Cameron pour Idylls of the King de Tennyson (1874-1875), et l’ouvrage Thoughts of a Night Sea (2002) qui réunit photographies de Garry Fabian Miller et poèmes de Lavinia Greenlaw. La comparaison permet de développer l’idée que les poèmes sont des illustrations textuelles des photographies. L’histoire éditoriale révèle la manière dont les artistes ont conçu le rôle et le statut de leurs contributions à ces publications communes. Le transfert de caractéristiques formelles, thématiques ou narratives d’une forme artistique à l’autre incite à envisager la relation entre poèmes et photographies comme une forme d’adaptation. En s’appuyant sur des concepts de la traduction, on proposera une classification de ces processus d’adaptation comme transpositions ou modulations. Enfin, on examinera les affinités esthétiques en arrière-plan de ces collaborations. This essay focuses on two examples of collaboration between a photographer and a poet: Julia Margaret Cameron’s illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1874-1875), and the volume Thoughts of a Night Sea (2002), with photographs by Garry Fabian Miller and poems by Lavinia Greenlaw. The comparison enables me to characterise Greenlaw’s poems as textual illustrations of Miller’s photographs. The editorial history of the volumes points to how the artists conceived of the role of their contributions and the status of their creations in the finished works. The transfer of formal, thematic, and narrative characteristics from one art form to the other leads me to envision the relationships between the poems and the photographs as forms of adaptation. Borrowing from concepts used in translation studies, I propose to categorise these processes of adaptation as either transpositions or modulations. Ultimately, I examine the aesthetic affinities behind these collaborations.