In her work Bellocq’s Ophelia, Natasha Trethewey suggests that photography is an escape.
Ophelia at the beginning does not understand who she is, who she was meant to be, or why she lives as a prostitute, though she does not explicitly use that term. In the series “Letters from Storyville” in the poem “March 1911,” Ophelia gives insight to her childhood. She states, “Later, I took arsenic—tablets I swallowed to keep me fair, bleached white as stone. Whiter still, I am a reversed silhouette against the black backdrop where I pose” (Trethewey 20). As a child, Ophelia physically poisoned herself to masque her black skin. That she is a mixture of black and white races is confusing in itself. In her current life, she states that she is “whiter still” and a “reversed silhouette.” This language is somewhat oxymoronic. The word silhouette usually implicates dark and shadowy imagery, yet Ophelia uses this word to say she is a white silhouette, perhaps even ghostly. Whether a dark shadow or a white ghost, either way Ophelia describes herself using confusing descriptions because she herself does not know who she is.
After she is introduced to photography and gets a feel for the technique, Ophelia finds capabilities within herself that she did not know existed. In “Disclosure,” Ophelia says, “what power I find in transforming what is real, flushed with light” (44). Ophelia is thus empowered by using photography. She is able to take something real and manipulate it to her liking. Physically, a photograph is “flushed with light,” but metaphorically, this statement can also be seen as a way to describe Ophelia’s mood and happiness when she works with photographs. Her world fills with light, and that power she feels when manipulating a photograph morphs into feeling empowered in the real world.
Lastly, in “Photography,” Ophelia describes inverting a photo: “in the negative the whole world reverses…Inside out, I said, thinking of what I’ve tried to hide…I look at what he can see through his lens and what he cannot” (43). Through manipulation of a photograph, even though she is not physically able to see inside herself, Ophelia feels empowered to see herself from the inside out. Through photography and lighting effects, she is able to gain insight on her true self. She even states that she is able to see beyond what the camera lens can see. She pays closer attention to details on the outside as well as on the inside. Thus, photography is a way for Ophelia to escape her confusing, messed up life and gain a better understanding of herself, furthermore giving her power and control. Overall, Trethewey suggests that photography offers an escape to a better and more powerful life.
I definitely agree with your points on how Photography helps Ophelia escape her world. She is stronger behind the camera and can truly understand herself much more than she has ever been. I like the symbolic comparison you made that the light of the camera certainly reveals Ophelia’s character. Ophelia depends on the camera, as seen by her wishes: “Now I face the camera, wait for the photograph to show me who I am (Trethewey 21). She is surely empowered by the camera as someone of true character and not just a “silhouette” or shadow of the real person.
I’m not sure, Posi. Doesn’t that quotation that you’ve used suggest that she is lacking in agency, in the ability to define herself?
Maybe I assumed wrongly, but I thought that the camera was the her source of empowerment since she made reference to it as the source to find herself. She is definitely lacking in agency on her own, but the camera is showing her who she is, and thus empowering her to see and and define her character.
I agree that Ophelia seems to find herself through photography. In the beginning letters, Ophelia seems lost and cannot figure out who she is. She constantly expresses the desire to hide who she really is and become something completely. However, once Ophelia uses her money to buy a camera and Belloq shows her the ropes of photography, she feels more in control of her and ready to explore who she is as person.
Like Posi and Jaime, I’ll agree, Amanda, that you’ve done an excellent job teasing out some of the implications of Ophelia’s adoption of photography and I appreciate your sensitivity to some of the different quirks of language that Trethewey draws on to underscore the problems of Ophelia’s race.