Photographic ekphrasis as a form of memory, or how to create a novel with the help of photos (“The girl with a watering can” by H. Yanechek and “Memory of memory” by M. Stepanova)

This article discusses the features of the functioning of photo-abstracts in the literary text, focused on the verbal representation of memory and the past. Based on the novels of M. Stepanova and H. Yanechek, the place and role of material evidence (photography) in the artistic narrative are analyzed. Now, there are practically no theoretical and literary works devoted to the reinterpretation of photoekphrasys, whereas ekphrasis as a special technique is given a fairly large number of studies in the light of the intermediality of literature. The photo-facade that appears in the two analyzed works is closely related to the concept of a lacuna that fills the author’s horizons, thereby creating a fictional narrative. The reader and the narrator often find themselves in equal receptive conditions. Photoecrasis can verbally duplicate the evidence included in the narrative, or it can acquire spatio-temporal features, expanding to a separate reality, helping the author’s horizons to reconstruct the historical context. Pho-toekphrasis is focused on stopping time, reconstructing the past in the present, accompanied by an increased subjective process of signification.