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.