Power in the Eye of the Beholder: Authoring Text and Image in the Female Rock Memoir

Abstract

Female rock memoirists tend to follow the celebrity autobiography practice of illustrating their accounts with career-related photographs of themselves and their lives. Patti Smith, Viv Albertine, and Liz Phair, however, choose to replace these images with pictures taken by themselves of other people, places, and objects. In an act of empowerment, these three women place themselves behind the camera, no longer being relegated to the position of objects, but (re)presenting themselves as artistic subjects. Through these works that go beyond the mere autobiographical act, Smith, Albertine, and Phair thus take full control not only of their narratives but also of their image while raising questions about the boundaries between fact and fiction, the faultiness of memory, or the need to contextualize images.