“Photo girl he calls her”: Re-Reading Milly in "Ulysses"

Milly Bloom, James Joyce’s “Photo girl” in “Ulysses” (1922), has typically been read by critics as a whimsical and overtly-sexualised figure, despite the more progressive aspects of her role in the photographic industry. In “Ulysses”, photography is depicted as a hereditary pursuit, as when Joyce describes Leopold Bloom as thinking of his daughter, “Now photography. Poor papa’s daguerreotype atelier he told me of. Hereditary taste” (U 8 173-74). Joyce’s relationship with his daughter, Lucia, was frequently mediated by photography. In 1936, he purchased a camera for Lucia after encouraging her to pursue this medium. In re-reading Milly’s role via George Eastman’s Kodak Girl, and the emergence of Irish and Triestine visual culture, new light is shed on the relationship between female photography and familial duty.