In search of authenticity: The relationship between text and image in Wojciech Tochmanʼs reportage “Eli, Eli”

This article deals with the ekphrastic text/image (photography) relationships in Eli, Eli, Wojciech Tochman and Grzegorz Wełnicki's 2013 reportage from the slums of the Philippine capital Manila. The photos and the ekphrastic texts form a compact whole intended to produce the effect of unvarnished truth. It is this quality, the insistence on bearing witness to the truth, no matter how shocking, that determines the genre of Eli, Eli. The counterpointal arrangement of the images and the accompanying texts open the possibility of aesthetic and ethical discord between the testimony of the photographer and that of the reporter. However, in the end such tensions reinforce and validate the truthfulness of their report. This article discusses the strategy and the techniques deployed by the authors of Eli, Eli to establish a foolproof authenticity of their work.