Camera Lucida -- Roland Barthes (Victor G.)

Name: Roland Barthes

Title: Camera Lucida, Reflections on Photography

Pub. Date: 1981, translation

Length: 119

<>Barthes’ project in Camera Lucida is to establish a new means of observing and, in effect, a new consciousness through photography. <>

This text is divided into two wholly different, yet entirely dependent, sections. The first section attempts to offer a new definition of what photography is, can be, or should be. The second section is more of a search for his deceased mother amongst the lingering photographs of her. This latter section builds upon the former in order to arrive at a new understanding of photography and of the self. <>

In the more personal examination of photography, Barthes proceeds to distinguish between a characteristic of duality, “a co-presence of two discontinuous elements”, what he terms the studium and the punctum. The studium is the “application to a thing, a general enthusiastic commitment”; the studium refers to that range of meanings that are universal to anyone and everyone. This studium implies that a photograph can be taken in, may be consumed without any great expenditure of thinking; it is the desire to study the meanings in the photograph. The punctum is a “sting, peck, cut, little hole, a cast of the dice”. This is the private meaning, it is not easily communicated via language. This is the detail that attracts and holds the spectator’s gaze. <>

Barthes takes the “study” of photography out of the realm of analysis, and devises a new science of photography—a framework that moves beyond the classifications of art, technique, etc., and draws upon “absolute subjectivity”. <>

Camera Lucida is a slight departure from Barthes’ previous analysis of photography in Image-Music‑Text, and more in line with his analysis of photography in Mythologies. However, CL is a departure from the analytical endeavor, and more of an introspection. This text works for me in the sense that it provides me an alternative means by which to view and consume photography. <>

The following simply are outtakes of Camera Lucida; rather profuse, but ones that will provide a more in depth view of Barthes’ text as opposed to the above: <>

Part 1. <>

Photography (the photograph) captures a moment in history, keeps it keeps it current, keeps it in the now. This is an exploration of what Photography is “in itself”. A photograph is a duality (signifier and signified). By nature, the Photograph … has something tautological about it. (tautologous: true by virtue of its logical form alone) A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see. The writing of Photography falls between the expressive of writing and critical writing; and this critical writing lay the discourses of sociology, semiology, and psychoanalysis. The Photograph can be the object of three practices: to do, to undergo, to look. The Operator is the Photographer; the Spectator is ourselves … the person or thing photographed is the target, the referent, a kind of little simulacrum, any eidelon… The subject-target while posing derives its existence, metaphorically, from the photographer. The photo-self never coincides with the actual-self, thereby taking on a (signified) life of its own. The photograph is the advent of the self as other; a dissociation of consciousness from identity. The subject photographed suffers from inauthenticity. Multiple readings of the same subject. Interpretations dependant upon context. Death is the eidos of [the] Photograph. (eidos: the distinctive expression of the cognitive or intellectual character of a culture or a social group). It is through studium, that interest lies in so many photographs; a photograph’s punctum is the accident that pricks (studium: application to a thing, taste for someone, general enthusiastic commitment; punctum: sting, speck, cut, little hole, cast of the dice). Culture is a contract arrived at between creators and consumers. The Photograph is dangerous. Photographs contain within them, certain biographical features (named biographemes). Photography has the same relation to History that biographemes have to biography. Photography is a cover, a mask, for death. Since every photograph is contingent (and thereby outside of meaning), Photography cannot signify except by assuming a mask. In the realm of Advertising, the meaning must be clear and distinct only by reason of its mercantile nature; in the rest, the object speaks. It causes thinking. Ultimately, Photography is subversive, not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks. The studium is ultimately always coded, the punctum is not. The punctum is an addition, and nonetheless, it is already there. <>

Part 2. <>

Attempting to “find” his mother amongst photographs. History separated him from the many photographs of his mother. (anamnesis: a recalling to mind) Could he recognize her. All the world’s photographs formed a labyrinth; at the center, the one photograph of his mother would fulfill Nietzsche’s prophecy: “A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but only his Ariadne.” (Ariadne: a daughter of Minos who helps Theseus escape from the labyrinth). From hereon, the investigation of Photography must not be done from the viewpoint of pleasure, but in relation to what is called love and death. Photography offers an immediate presence to the world—a co-presence. The Photograph does not necessarily say what is no longer, but only and for certain what has been. Photography never lies: or rather, it can lie, as to the meaning of the thing … Every Photograph is a certificate of presence. The photograph has no future. Not only is the Photograph never a memory, but it blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory. The Photograph is violent. The Photograph cannot say what it lets us see. (oneiric: of or relating to dreams; ecmnesic: hallucinations)

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