Beyond Authentication: The Construction of Patti Smith’s Identity Through Text and Image

Abstract

Ever since Patti Smith began pondering the idea of becoming an artist, she has shown great interest in photography. First through her connection to Robert Mapplethorpe and later through her own exploration of the medium, photography has always been present in Smith’s work. When we look into Smith’s use of photography in her memoirs—Just Kids (2010), M Train (2015), and Year of the Monkey (2019)—we realize that pictures fulfil different purposes in each book beyond that of solely authenticating the written narrative. With each new publication the text/image interplay gains in complexity, layers of meaning are added and possibilities for interpretation arise.

When we factor in Smith’s latest publication, A Book of Days (2022), where pictures outweigh words, we gain a greater understanding of the hybridity at play in her work. As we explore the interaction of text and image in these books, we gradually become aware of issues such as the fading of the fact/fiction boundary, the presence of inter and intratextuality, the conscious devising of a personal aesthetic, or the role performed by a reader who is also a viewer. Besides, regarding the four books as part of a major oeuvre—one single literary and visual self-portrait—also allows us to shed light on how unstable and fragmented identity is, demonstrating how the self is ever under construction.