Photography Reframed: Severo Sarduy’s Meditations on Media in Two Radio Scripts

Abstract

This article argues that two radio plays by Severo Sarduy, La playa (The Beach) and Los matadores de hormigas (The Ant Killers), serve as unexpected sites for theorizing photography. Sarduy, who once translated the opening of Roland Barthes’s La chambre claire (Camera Lucida), rarely referenced the medium elsewhere in his published writings, and the article contends that the scripts offer a reframing of photography by radio in which the specifics of sound transmission reposition our understanding of image production. It begins by analyzing depictions of decolonization, tourism, and photojournalism in Los matadores de hormigas, where Sarduy anticipates and amplifies theories of photography not despite the absence of the visual but rather precisely because of it. It then turns to how La playa links photography, listening, and abduction, which names an indispensable step toward interpreting the many examples of indexicality that emerge either on or alongside the sandy surfaces pervading the play. Emphasizing where the ear can instruct the eye, the article examines the approach to photography that Sarduy develops when considering it through radio, paying particular attention to how the scripts suggest that the active engagement frequently missing from the way viewers consume images can be found and fostered through listening.