Virginia Woolf and the \u27Objective\u27 Camera: The Relationship Between Text and Image in Three Guineas and Orlando

Though photography offers a claim to objectivity that writing and painting cannot ostensibly equal, Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas and Orlando: A Biography argue that the camera is not an unmediated form of documentation.Three Guineas’ images of a patriarchal society and Orlando’s more personal portraits reflect their photographers’ inherent subjectivity, and the photographs’ placement in and relationship with the texts further question the veracity of representation. Whereas Three Guineas derives its power from the contrast between reproduced and described photographs, Orlando uses images to present a counter-narrative contradicting the purported reliability of biographical accounts