Reading—Barthe’s Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes’ short book on the nature of photography seems, at times, less about photography than it is an extended personal reflection on grief and the persistence of memory. The death of his mother prompts him to look at photographs of her and of his family, to see what he can recover that reminds him of her essence. At the end of the book, the answer appears to be: relatively little. Along the way, however, the reader is treated to a discussion of photography’s unique genius, a kind of extrapolation from his experience of his family’s photographs to statements about the medium as a whole (73).

Part of photography’s uniqueness lies in the way that it “mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially” (4) and that, unlike painting, it forever carries its referent with it (5–7). A painting can portray a scene that has never existed, but a photograph (for the most part?) points to something that once appeared in front of a camera. Describing the pre-digital world, Barthes separates the phenomenon into a chain of Operator (photographer), Spectrum (the image or spectacle itself) and Spectator (the viewer; 9). As a non-photographer, however, Barthes concerns himself only with the last two of these (10).

[Question: What would Barthes have made of digital image generation and manipulation?]

The photographic subject is always aware that he or she is posing, which introduces a series of distancing states of mind and behaviour: “In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art” (13). The act of taking a simple portrait is clearly not so simple—and Barthes hasn’t even introduced the place of the viewer in interpreting the portrait once it has been made.

[Observation: the various layers of thinking between photographer and subject could serve as a useful set of interpretive questions.]

Barthes introduces his thoughts about the relationship between photography and death early in the book and returns to it at several points. Cameras are “clocks for seeing” (a lovely phrase!) that have the power to freeze an instant and render the subject locked in time, dead (14–15). Photography is related to theatre, with early connections with “the cult of the Dead” (31).

The author speaks about the importance of affect in photography, which the Spectator experiences “as a wound,” (20–21). This will help to set up the later discussion on the presence of the punctum in some photographs—probably the central contribution of the book to the understanding of photographs.

[Question: why is Barthes interested in some photographs but not in others? Is it an issue of affect rather than interest? (25)]

Barthes introduces his categories of studium and punctum. The “studium is of the order of liking, not of loving” and leads us “inevitably to encounter the photographer’s intentions” (26–27). It “is a kind of education (knowledge and civility, “politeness”) which allows me to discover the Operator, to experience the intentions which establish and animate his practices…” (28).

[Observation: from his description of studium in this passage and others, I get the distinct impression that Barthes is not much interested in photographers or what motivates them. I believe his word for much of the process and practice photographic would be “banal.” He is not a photographer himself and, while he seems to have a romantic attachment to the sounds of shutters and the appearance of wooden cameras (15), he is largely preoccupied with his own experiences as a Spectator. It is likely for this reason he spends so much time on punctum: it directly touches his own feelings.]

The punctum is a “sting, speck, cut, little hole—and also a cast of the dice. A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)” (27).

[Observation: I did not fully appreciate how idiosyncratic and personal Barthes’ idea of punctum was until much later in the book. I had thought, at first, that every good (?) picture would have both studium and punctum until I saw how Barthes used punctum: the reactions and associations he has with odd elements in an image, filtered through his feelings and experiences. There is likely no universal punctum we can appeal to or look for in an image—it is all about the Spectator’s response. I have to admit being a bit disappointed in this, but I suppose that it is largely accurate: we respond to particular images because they call up something in us, consciously or unconsciously. It reminds me of the French verb, interpeller—it calls forth something from me, questions me.]

Barthes carries on this line of thought in a small passage that is worth noting: “Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks” (38; cf. 55). The punctum, then, does its best work when it does not hit the Spectator over the head—this is too obvious and looks too much like advertising—but when it causes the viewer to reflect after seeing the image. This does not happen in unary photographs, which are too literal—they are pornographic rather than erotic, leaving nothing to the imagination (40–41).

For Barthes, the punctum has “more or less potentially, a power of expansion” (45)—that is, it can open up meaning rather than closing it down—and is not created deliberately by the photographer (47). It should be “revealed only after the fact, when the photograph is no longer in front of me and I think back on it” (53). The punctum “is an addition: it is what I add to the photograph and what is nonetheless already there” (55). Counter-intuitively, Barthes declares that “[u]ltimately—or at the limit—in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes” (53).

[Observation: I think this last sentence is wonderful. It describes the power of the most striking images to remain in the imagination after the they have been viewed, allowing the viewer to keep turning them over in the mind’s eye. Barthes’ development of the punctum reminds me very much of the way the parables of Jesus function rhetorically in the Gospels: each one is a little world in itself, a little baited hook in the thought world of the hearer. They are time-release capsules that do not admit of a single, final meaning, but continue to draw the attention, like a spot—Barthes’ wound?—that goes on itching.]

Most of Part II of Camera Lucida is given over to a series of readings of photographs where Barthes walks out the insights he has outlined in Part I. He generalizes from the specific cases of individual photographs to the general case of all photographs, while illustrating by example how personal is his understanding of punctum (73–75). He returns to his earlier assertion that part of the genius of photography—as distinct from other visual arts such as painting—is the referent in each image (76–80). The photograph “is literally an emanation of the referent” (80). The photograph does not tell us what is or “what is no longer, but only and for certain what has been” (85). For this reason, a photograph is not a memory, “but it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory” (91). Photographs are unreal and perish (92–96). A photographic “likeness” is not actually like anything, except other photographs (102–103).

Although they appear several pages before the end of the book, I think that these words sum up well where Barthes’ discussion leads: “I cannot penetrate, cannot reach into the Photograph. I can only sweep it with my glance, like a smooth surface. The Photograph is flat, platitudinous in the true sense of the word, that is what I must acknowledge” (106).

It is a mistake to look for memory and the real in a photographic image. Instead we should be aware of what we bring to the act of reading an image, recognizing the highly personal nature of the punctum that we may find in it. This is challenging enough to keep in mind as a Spectator; it is all the more difficult to swallow as an Operator.

Reference

Barthes, R. (2010) Camera Lucida: reflections on photography. (Paperback ed.) New York: Hill and Wang.

Reading—The Aesthetics of Affect

My tutor suggested this reading as part of the feedback I received following A2. It is not an easy piece to navigate, but the argument seems to run as follows:

Contemporary thinking about art has neglected its aesthetic dimension and has not sufficiently taken into account its special nature of being both “a part of the world […and…] apart from the world” (O’Sullivan, 2001: 125).
The interpretive frameworks of Marxism and Deconstructionism have viewed art from two poles: a historical approach based on the time of the work’s production (Marxism) and an ahistorical approach that views the work with little or no regard for its creator or origins (Deconstructionism).
Although each approach has something to offer, both locate the import of the work in reason while “[a]rt, whether we will it or not, continues producing affects” (126).
By “affect,” O’Sullivan does not mean something transcendent—or “beyond experience”—but something “immanent to experience”. Rather than being carried out of oneself, one is involved in “an event or happening” (126–127).
Art invites us into a happening by showing us things we would not, or could not, otherwise perceive. A simple way of doing this is through the use of technology, such as very long or very short photographic exposures. More profoundly, O’Sullivan (referencing Georges Bataille) asserts that art functions as a “mechanism for accessing a kind of immanent beyond to everyday experience; art operates as a kind of play which takes the participant out of mundane consciousness” (127).
In this way, art does not invite us to a transcendence beyond ourselves, but works “to switch our intensive register, to reconnect us with the world. Art opens us up to the non-human universe that we are part of” (128). Further, art is “[l]ess involved in knowledge and more involved in experience, in pushing forward the boundaries of what can be experienced (130).

Response

I wound up enjoying O’Sullivan’s article once I had had the chance to digest it. I think that there is a lot to be said for mounting a defence of “affect” as a way to approach art (how does it make me feel? does it bring me something different or new?) given that, for many people, there is an expectation that we will think our way through it (where does it come from? how does it mean? what does it signify?). I think that this may be particularly true in the developed world and that we may have cut ourselves off from other or more complete ways of appreciating the art around us. It seemed a little ironic to me, though, that O’Sullivan makes such a cerebral appeal for the importance of feeling.

I was also surprised by the extent of the religious language and metaphor in the text, from the contrast of transcendence and immanence to the use of terms such as “sacred” and “incarnation.” I imagine that many readers might either move past these quite quickly or categorize them as “spiritual, but not religious” (as the common expression goes). For someone with academic training in Christian theology, however, much of the language O’Sullivan uses has particular resonance and it would be interesting to map his usages against those of a theological aesthetics.

Without having time to do that now, I will limit myself to one question that occurs to me: if we follow O’Sullivan’s emphasis on the place of affect, is it necessary to make such a sharp delineation between immanence and transcendence? For example, if we are to take the concept of incarnation seriously (and it is O’Sullivan who raises it), Christian theology sees it as the very place where immanence and transcendence actually meet—in the person of Jesus.

I don’t expect at all that this is how O’Sullivan will develop his thought, but it is suggestive and meaningful to me. I will likely return to it in my thinking as I work through the OCA program.

Reference

O’Sullivan, S. (2001) ‘The aesthetics of affect: Thinking art beyond representation’ In: Angelaki 6 (3) pp. 125 – 135.

World Press Photo 2019

The World Press Photo 2019 travelling exhibit is currently on show in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. I have had the chance to visit the exhibit a few times in previous years, but I found that I saw it with different eyes this year.

Although the specifics of the images change from one year to the next, depending on where the latest trouble spots are in the world, I find that there is a sameness to the images, exhibit after exhibit. Conflict and violence occupy centre stage, as you’d expect from the world’s journalistic businesses—if it bleeds, it leads. The environment is also an area of photojournalistic attention as exploitation of the planet continues at a furious pace (one image of frogs dismembered alive for restaurants illustrates our appetite for destruction particularly well).

There are less shocking, but still dramatic, images every so often from the world of sport and there is the occasional human interest story about people with colourful costumes, interesting diets or religious practices that the media tend to depict as quaint, disturbing or both.

The difference for me this year had to do with the way I looked at the images: how they communicated as a body, rather than one by one.

The first thing I noticed is that there is still an audience for this type of photography. No matter how violent, graphic or disturbing we are fascinated by this type of photojournalism. I suppose that part of this feeds into the idea that we must document the happenings in our world, no matter how terrible they are. Or perhaps it is especially when terrible things happen that we must bear witness to them, although the witness has had little discernible success in keeping similar things from happening—how many times have we said “never again!”? Maybe the best we can hope for is that the perpetrators of this particular outrage might be brought to account, and the victims might receive some degree of recognition or vindication.

The next thing I noticed about the exhibit is that much of the coverage is of things that happen to vulnerable people in or from the developing world. Whether it is migrants to Germany turning to the sex trade just to live, a baby boom among former Colombian guerillas, or the plight of Mayan beekeepers, the collection suggests that bad things are going on among them, far away over there. Sure, Donald Trump shows up—by implication in a caravan of refugees heading to the U.S. border, or leading Emmanuel Macron by the hand—but most of the really bad stuff is happening somewhere else.

After recently reading Roland Barthes’ “Rhetoric of the Image” (Barthes and Sontag, 1989), I was also struck by the power of the caption to “anchor” and constrain the interpretation of an image. The best example of this is the first image one sees when entering the exhibition, which is Brent Stirton‘s picture of an African woman at night, heavily camouflaged and carrying an assault weapon. Is she a guerilla? A jihadist? A government soldier? Is she attacking or is she preparing to defend? Where exactly is she? The image itself could be read in any of a dozen or more ways, but the caption ends the questioning and settles the matter (in a surprising way, for me):

https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo/2019/37622/1/Brent-Stirton

Petronella Chigumbura (30), a member of an all-female anti-poaching unit called Akashinga, participates in stealth and concealment training in the Phundundu Wildlife Park, Zimbabwe.

I realized how often we simply we accept such captions as Gospel. But what if the caption writer gets it wrong, accidentally or by design? Is the caption a reliable guide? Has the photographer understood all the implications of his or her image, and the complexities of the context? The viewer has no way of knowing (but may accept or reject the authority of caption depending on how ‘reasonable’ or palatable it may sound).

Finally, one of the signs in the museum set me thinking about the role curation plays in an exhibition like this. The sign read, “The stories that matter.” We can take that statement at face value, but the obvious question is: to whom do they matter? Who decides? On what basis? This is certainly not a kick at the organizers of the World Press Photo Contest, but it is a reminder that we never see an unmediated or unselected image. We don’t have to cast aspersions on the motives of the people who choose images to remember that they do indeed have them. And so do we.

Reference

Barthes, R. and Sontag, S. (1989) Selected writings. Fontana.

Readings—Barthes

In “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes’ (1977) main point is that it is impossible to know who is speaking in a text: is it the writer? a persona the writer has adopted? a character created in the text? a reliable narrator? other? The “death of the author,” is not so much the literal death of the individual who wrote the piece, but the impossibility of knowing whose voice is being expressed. This stands counter to any interpretation of the text that relies on divining authorial voice or intent. Instead, Barthes asserts, meaning is created as a kind of performance between the text and the mind of the reader.

The most immediate implication of this is that since meaning depends upon the interaction of text and reader, no text has a final ‘correct’ meaning—what Barthes refers to as a ‘theological’ meaning or the “‘message’ of the Author-God.” Every text is capable of bearing as many meanings as there are readers. And Barthes means this to be just as sweeping a claim as it sounds: “literature […] liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law.”

This approach to meaning implies that, as the author ‘dies,’ attention shifts sharply to the role of the reader as the co-creator of potential meanings.

“Rhetoric of the Image” (Barthes and Sontag, 1989) begins with a discussion of how many commentators deny that imagery fits the category of a ‘language.’ The notion of a visual language is denied from both sides at once: by those who point out that images offer only a “rudimentary system” when compared with speech, and by those who see images as containing an “ineffable richness” of meaning.

To put these positions to the test, Barthes draws on advertising imagery because of its clear “intentionality.” He analyses the test image in terms of its textual content as well as in terms of the visual signs (signifiers and signifieds) that he finds in it. Barthes speaks of images as being ‘polysemous’—capable of many meanings—and identifies two key ways in which text and image may function together:

anchorage—the text interprets the image and aims to reduce its polysemy; or
relay—the text and the image work in a complementary way.

I wonder, though, if there is not a third way that text and image could affect one another: is it not possible that the image could serve as an anchor for text? Couldn’t a powerful image shape or limit the way its accompanying text would be interpreted? It seems to me that irony and sarcasm could run in both directions, telling the viewer that the accompanying text (or image) was unreliable and might be read opposite to the way that it might otherwise be understood.

Barthes ends the article with some brief ideas on what might constitute a ‘rhetoric of the image.’ Barthes suggests that the form of visual rhetoric might be similar to that of spoken rhetoric (drawing on the techniques and terminology of classical rhetoric), but that the content would need to differ. If there is indeed a visual rhetoric at work in images, whether with or without text, they would function as persuasive communications designed not to describe or portray a reality, but to shape one for the viewer. And if Barthes’ argument holds true for the world of advertising, it may be applicable beyond that world.

If so, that raises questions for me:

When looking at a given image, what reality or realities does it create for the viewer/me?
How does the image try to persuade? To what end?
How effective is the persuasion for different viewers? For example, what role does culture play in the creation of the meaning? How do different viewers ‘read’ an image?
How might this apply to the images that I create?

References

Barthes, R. (1977) Image, music, text. Hill and Wang.

Barthes, R. and Sontag, S. (1989) Selected writings. Fontana.

Martha Rosler on documentary photography

Quotations, questions and thoughts

Documentary photography has been much more comfortable in the company of moralism than wedded to a rhetoric or program of revolutionary politics.

A large part of Rosler’s argument is that documentary does not aim so much to change the structures responsible for the world around us, but that it is designed to comfort viewers and confirm that there is no reason to act.

Documentary is a little like horror movies, putting a face on fear and transforming threat into fantasy, into imagery. One can handle imagery by leaving it behind. (It is them, not us.)

Does documentary distance the real world and make it safe for us by pulling its teeth?

But which political battles have been fought and won by someone for someone else?

Does documentary really lead to meaningful change? Do the creators and consumers of documentary fool themselves into thinking that they are able to effect the “right” change or any change at all?

It is easy to understand why what has ceased to be news becomes testimonial to the bearer of the news. Documentary testifies finally, to the bravery or (dare we name it?) the manipulativeness and savvy of the photographer, who entered a situation of
physical danger, social restrictedness, human decay, or combinations of these and saved us the trouble.

Rosler goes on to name a Who’s Who of well-known “documentarian stars” to make a very sharp point: the focus of documentary is not the photographic subject but the photographer, whatever narrative is offered to the viewer.

An early –1940s, perhaps–Kodak movie book tells North American travelers, such as the Rodman C. Pells of San Francisco, pictured in the act of photographing a Tahitian, how to film natives so that they seem unconscious of the camera.

Documentary photography is not just subject to portraying a particular embedded viewpoint but is, at times, subject to manipulation to better make a point or achieve a desired effect.

…topicality drops away as epochs fade, and the aesthetic aspect is, if anything, enhanced by the loss of specific reference.

With the passage of time (and the reception of the images as art?), the specific content of documentary becomes less and less relevant. Whatever the original justification might have been (social benefit? newsworthiness?), the documentary subject becomes a free-floating object.

An analysis which reveals social institutions as serving one class by legitimating and enforcing its domination while hiding behind the false mantle of even-handed universality necessitates an attack on the monolithic cultural myth of objectivity (transparency, unmediatedness), which implicates not only photography but all journalistic and reportorial objectivity used by mainstream media to claim ownership of all truth.

This comes back to Rosler’s argument that documentary does not seriously challenge the established social order but actually helps to prop it up—the subjects are not us and we can make judgements about them from a distance and a superior height.

[A] new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends. Their aim has not been to reform life, but to know it. Their work betrays a sympathy (almost an affection(for the imperfections and the frailties of society. They like the real world, in spite of its terrors, as the source of all wonder and fascination and value(no less precious for being irrational. . . . What they hold in common is the belief that the commonplace is really worth looking at, and the courage to look at it with a minimum of theorizing. [quoting John Szarkowski]

Rosler has no time for Szarkowski’s misty-eyed view of the documentarians of the 60s and 70s. Instead, she sees in them an aloofness toward their subjects that produces images of spectacle and people as unwitting circus performers. This doesn’t seem to be any better than the moralizing of the previous generation of photographers and the result is the same in Rosler’s estimation: the established social order can sleep safe.

But the common acceptance of the idea that documentary precedes, supplants, transcends, or cures full, substantive social activism is an indicator that we do not yet have a real documentary.

Perhaps Rosler develops this thought somewhere else, but I found it a frustrating end to her article. We are aware of the contempt that she had for documentary photography until the 1980s, but what does she think “a real documentary” would look like? Her closing sentence implies that something of the kind is possible, but how would it avoid all of the pitfalls of what had gone before? Who would practise it? Would there be an audience for it?

This last point is something that I have wondered about as I have looked at the work of environmental (e.g. Burtynsky), conflict (e.g. McCullin) and journalistic (e.g. McCurry) photographers: if the images they show us are not aesthetically or emotionally compelling, will we want to look at them for long? And if we don’t want to look at their images, what would any of these photographers achieve? (Apart from recognition and money, of course.)

I found Rosler’s essay more complex than it needed to be, but important. Her questions and accusations have to be faced if we are to be honest about the nature of society and the motivations of individuals. People with any degree of standing or power have an interest in preserving the status quo, and more of us belong in that camp than would like to admit it. In some ways, her writing reminds me of the response I had to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing—Berger is gentler, but there is a persistent, useful Marxist social critique lying behind his observations and I suspect that the same philosophical strain lies behind Martha Rosler’s work.

I wonder, though, if Rosler’s argument was just too bleak. Having offered a withering critique of documentary, does she leave us with anywhere to go?

Reference

Berger, John (ed.) (1990) Ways of seeing: based on the BBC television series with John Berger. (Repr) London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books.

Rosler, Martha (1993) ‘In, Around, and Afterthoughts: On Documentary Photography’ In: Bolton, Richard (ed.) The contest of meaning: critical histories of photography. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Some definitions

The introductory material for CAN begins by looking at issues of definition around the terms “context” and “narrative.” Context seems to be particularly broad as it encompasses not only the physical placement of an image but also possible intellectual/social settings. Narrative pertains more to the world inside the frame of an image or the coherence across a series of images. The definitions seem a little arbitrary, but they will serve as a kind of shorthand for the two sets of reference, inside and outside the frame.

Photographers are encouraged to keep context and narrative in mind as they create and display their work and this makes sense. At the same time, I can see some potential pitfalls: first, no artist can be fully aware of the narratives that might exist or be perceived within the frame of his or her work; second, artists may not have complete control over the context within which their work is displayed.

I think, then, that we will do well to bring a good level of awareness and mindfulness to our work—such as what is going in the art world and the broader society, as well as what sorts of codes or references we may be drawing on consciously or otherwise. But we must also resign ourselves to the fact that what we think we are putting into our work may not be what comes out of it for audiences…because of the complexities of context and narrative.

Reference

Boothroyd, Sharon (2017) ‘Introduction’ In: Context and Narrative. (s.l.): Open College of the Arts. pp.13–20.