”Nu står jag här, mitt i bilden” En intermedial analys av Bea Uusmas Expeditionen: Min kärlekshistoria

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to examine Bea Uusma’s book The Expedition: A Love Story through an intermedial lens. The book tells the story of the failed Andrée North Pole expedition of 1897. It also focuses on the author’s own obsession with the expedition and her quest to explain the deaths of the crew members. The book’s ambiguous genre and its unconventional use of graphic design and photography motivate an intermedial analysis. The main purpose of the essay is to explore the functions of the graphic design and the pictures within the book. It achieves this by applying Maria Nikolajeva’s methodology for analysis of the interrelation of text and images. The analysis shows that the graphic design and the use of photography play a prominent role, as the combination of text and images creates certain narrative effects. Some of these effects are dependent on the specific media qualities associated with photography. The essay also uses Maria Lindgren Leavenworth’s term second journey to argue that Uusma’s pictures constitute a photographic second journey. The graphic design and the pictures have a dual function: they tell a story about the expedition in a personal manner with certain emphases, and they aid in the argumentation of Uusma's theory regarding the crew members’ cause of death. In the concluding discussion, the essay suggests that the intermedial storytelling of the book can be regarded as an example of the deconstruction of the 19th century male polar hero.