"Let the memories begin". El álbum familiar de fotos y la autobiografía española contemporánea

Abstract

This article explores the interactions between photography and self-writing in contemporary Spanish autobiography. Through the analysis of autobiographies by Carmen Martín Gaite and Paloma Díaz-Mas, the presence of the family album is revealed as a structural device and as an essential constituent of a dialogue between image and word that transcends the boundaries of Spanish autobiographical writing towards the constitution of experimental hybrid texts, or «imagetext», according to the concept created by W. J. T. Mitchell.