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.

Research point—Relay

Sophie Calle — Take Care of Yourself

The title of Calle’s work is taken from the last line of a breakup e-mail she received from her partner. Calle sent the text of the e-mail to 107 women in different lines of work and asked for their perspectives on the message. The responses, along with images made by the artist, were used as an installation.
The sheer variety of the responses points out the role of the reader in interpreting text and creating meaning, a key point in postmodernist literary theory.
Although Calle’s images appear alongside the responses she received, their number means that no one of them holds a place of privilege in determining the meaning of the text of the e-mail: “By circulating the letter to women of all ages, artistic and otherwise, Calle transforms the breakup into a survey of interpretation” (Fisher, 2009).
In addition, the responses of the 107 and the images made by Calle were produced independently and could be ‘read’ in multiple combinations, so each adds a potential layer of meaning without being definitive: neither the images nor the texts limit or determine the others’ meaning. Instead, texts and images can play off one another and provide additional, potential layers of meaning. The reader/viewer has a range of insights and interpretations to draw on.
What is interesting about the many interpretations offered by Calle’s collaborators is that they are based entirely upon a single text. As a postmodern work, the exhibit turns back on itself in that, although there are 107 interpretations, many of the interpreters seem to believe they are commenting on the behaviour of a man whom they know only through an e-mail. They are commenting in a ‘real’ way on a man who is, essentially, a reconstruction or a fiction based on almost no evidence at all. This leads to “[…] a dossier in text, photography and video [that] pours scorn on the boyfriend while lavishing Calle with sympathy” (Sophie Calle, ‘Take Care of Yourself, s.d.).
After cataloguing the number of interpretations and the forms they take, a number of reviewers acknowledge enjoying how a “persistent sense of female camaraderie is also achieved through the sheer entertainment value there is in seeing 107 women more or less humiliate a man” (Jankowicz, 2017). Again, it is perhaps less a man who is humiliated than the idea of a man, maybe a certain type of man or perhaps all men.
I agree that “[…] Calle’s work translates the broader feminine experience into a formalized world of possibilities. The ‘answers’ are less important than the forms of engagement and investigation, the invitation to construct meaning” (Fisher, 2009). But, for me, that construction of meaning affects not only interpretation of the text of the e-mail message, but also of the situation and actors who may (or may not!) have given rise to it as well as the interpreters themselves.

Sophy Rickett — Objects in the Field

Rickett’s installation comprises a set of prints of negatives taken through a telescope, accompanied by a brief text in several parts.
The images have been separated from their original scientific purpose, not only through time (they are now obsolete and were never of the best technical quality), but also through the way they are displayed. Instead of providing the prints with the usual type of tagging and metadata that accompany scientific observation, the photographs have been been produced and displayed according to visual or artistic criteria: some have been coloured and placed in sets, while others have been ordered by size in a sequence.
The parts of the accompanying text appear to be in roughly chronological order although they do not form a coherent narrative with a beginning, a middle and an end. Instead, each has some connection with vision or sight—an eye exam that reveals the need for glasses, a view from an aircraft and a short meditation on the night sky, a discussion with an astronomer (seemingly the one who made the exposures that were reworked for the installation), a glimpse from a train of an interaction between two children.
The text and the images play off each other in that they all represent momentary or partial views and the difficulties that we have with vision, either because our sight is poor or limited, our perception is only partial, or because we do not have enough time to observe fully. In this way the text that accompanies the images does not explain them, but provides them with added dimensions of meaning: not interpretations, but suggestions for further interpretive possibilities.
The title of the work—Objects in the Field—might also be a play on words in that it touches upon a field of vision or sight (eyes or the span of sky taken in by a telescopic), the apparent objectivity of the things we see, and the scientific activity of collecting objects for observation in field work (Sophy Rickett, 2013).
The work also plays on setting different ways of seeing beside each other: scientific observation (telescope and optometry), as part of human experience, and as an artistic vision of drawing out the tensions between these different ways of seeing. Rickett alludes to some of these tensions herself in an interview: “It looks at my attempts to find ways of aligning our very different practices, as well as my work as an artist with his as a scientist. But in the most part I fail. So the work came to be about a kind of symbiosis on the one hand, but on the other there is a real tension, a sense of us resisting one another. The material in the middle stays the same, but it’s kind of contested, fought over.”

KayLynn Deveney — The Day-to-Day Life of Alfred Hastings

Deveney’s project consists of 83 photographs and 77 handwritten captions by by her subject, Albert Hastings, along with some of Mr. Hasting’s poems, drawings and family photos.
The photographer presents the work as something that started as a documentary project and then evolved into a collaboration: “Early in this project Bert shared some intriguing thoughts and comments with me concerning my photographs of him. […] To better understand his feelings about being photographed and his reactions to my photographs, I asked Bert to caption small prints I kept in a pocket-sized notebook” (The Day to Day Life of Albert Hastings, s.d.).
The combination of images and hand-written texts is a selection of moments observed in Mr. Hastings’ daily life. Many of his comments are just descriptive (“Bringing my scones from the oven”) while others are more interpretive and seem to give us a personal insight (“Could this be a presumptive picture of my futuristic soul regarding a past world and friends?” or “I’m not talking to a ghost / I’m opening the curtains”). Other comments allude directly to the planned nature of the joint project (“Feeding pigeons, net curtain in the way. We were quietly getting birds accustomed to camera”).
The combination of image and text is interesting in that gives the impression that the final product is not entirely within the photographer’s hands. Mr. Hastings’ comments do give the viewer a sense of access to his thoughts—rather than to Deveney’s—but they do tend to direct interpretation and help to conceal somewhat the fact that this is the photographer’s edited project. But it’s an appealing mix.

Karen Knorr — Gentlemen

Knorr’s series of 26 images and texts “photographed in English gentlemen’s clubs in Saint James’ in central London consider the patriarchal values of the English upper middle classes with text constructed out of speeches of parliament and news” ( Gentlemen, s.d.).
The result is a series of black and white images shot in square format with the brief texts run underneath in centre-justified lines displayed like poetry. The square monochrome images help to underline how staid and rigid the old boys network is. The texts—often incongruous or relating to the images only in a broadly thematic way—are often comical. The effect is to show up the patriarchal establishment as outmoded and ridiculous, without ever saying so directly. As satire and protest, it works.
The juxtaposition of images and texts from different sources requires the viewer to work to make sense of what appears in the frame. Deriving the meaning is like a puzzle to be chewed on and arrived at slowly—or perhaps not at all. I suppose that some viewers could look at the series and come away with the impression that the it is artistic nonsense or an attempt to be ‘clever.’ It’s hard to know what the original viewers made of the work although, perhaps, those who visit galleries were presumed to be culturally sophisticated enough to grasp the photographer’s leanings. Humour can be a very effective tool for satire or for putting forth ideas that are not welcome but there is always a risk of misunderstanding, particularly when the humour is sly or depends on inside knowledge.
I plan to spend more time with this work and with Knorr’s other series. I appreciate her approach to composition and the humour in her work and would like to learn more from her.

References

Calle, S. (2007) Sophie Calle: Take Care of Yourself. (Nov Har/Dv edition) Arles, France: Dis Voir/Actes Sud.

Chrisafis, A. (2007) ‘Interview: Sophie Calle’ In: The Guardian 15 June 2007 [online] At: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/16/artnews.art (Accessed on 26 August 2019)

Fisher, C. (2009) Sophie Calle: Take Care of Yourself. At: https://brooklynrail.org/2009/06/artseen/take-care-of-yourself (Accessed on 26 August 2019)

Gentlemen (s.d.) At: https://karenknorr.com/photography/gentlemen/ (Accessed on 31 August 2019)

Jankowicz, M. (2017) “Take Care of Yourself”: Sophie Calle’s French Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennial. At: https://medium.com/@miajankowicz/take-care-of-yourself-sophie-calles-french-pavilion-at-the-2007-venice-biennial-a1a31f8df54a (Accessed on 26 August 2019)

Objects in the Field (s.d.) At: https://sophyrickett.com/objects-in-the-field-1 (Accessed on 26 August 2019)

Sophie Calle – Detachment, Death, and Dialogue (s.d.) At: https://zakdimitrov.com/sophie-calle/ (Accessed on 26 August 2019)

Sophie Calle, ‘Take Care of Yourself’ (s.d.) At: //www.timeout.com/newyork/art/sophie-calle-take-care-of-yourself (Accessed on 26 August 2019)

Sophy Rickett (2013) At: https://photoparley.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/sophy-rickett/ (Accessed on 27 August 2019)

Sophy Rickett. Objects in the Field (2014) At: https://wsimag.com/art/7404-sophy-rickett-objects-in-the-field (Accessed on 27 August 2019)

The Day to Day Life of Albert Hastings (s.d.) At: https://kaylynndeveney.com/the-day-to-day-life-of-albert-hastings (Accessed on 31 August 2019)

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.