Real or fiction: a photographic question in the short story Las babas del diablo, by Julio Cortázar and in the filmic work Blow-Up, by Michelangelo Antonio

Abstract

The purpose of the work is to perform an analysis of the role of photography in the short story Las babas del diablo by Julio Cortázar and the film work Blow-Up, by Michelangelo Antonioni, based on Roland Barthes' assumptions about the photographic process.  The narrative Las babas del diablo was first published in 1959, in a collection of short stories entitled Las armas secretas, it tells us the story of the photographer and translator, Michel, who by expanding some photos he realizes, in the images, that the photos are evidence of a crime. Inspired by this plot, in December 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni, transcribed (CAMPOS, 2013), in an exquisite way, the film Blow-Up. From the tale to the film, several questions were brought by Antonioni, identified in both literary and filmic work. Both literature and audiovisual media have the ability to narrate and the need for narratives, which allows proximity between both areas. However, each language has its specificities, since productions have their own ways of expressing themselves and appropriating meanings. . To this end, we will bring to discuss studies related to literature and photography, such as Roland Barthes (1984), Ismael Xavier (2003), Susan Sontag (2003), Julio Cortázar (2003) among others.