Roland Barthes - Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes - Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes was born in 1915 in Cherbourg France. Camera Lucida is considered his last major work and I found this book quite interesting. It is of course translated from French. The prose is understandably traditional of its time but its a very interesting book and written in almost 2 distinct but fairly short parts.

It appears to be initially a self reflective journey into understanding what photography is and the process to understand what makes a good photograph. He searches for something he finds evasive and tries to quantify what it is he feels makes a good photograph.  At some point during the writing of this book his Mother dies and the book takes a different, almost morbid slant. Barthes is not a photographer and so his analysis could be considered objective; he was known as theorist and philosopher.

Initially Barthes discusses portraits and how they don't seem to reflect the essence of the subject. Some of this he puts down to the subject pretending to show a different personality than the one they are; Barthes himself confesses how he feels uncomfortable as a subject. Toward the end of the book when searching to find a photograph that reflects the essence of his mother its telling that the one he feels best demonstrates this is one of her as a child, perhaps a child will more naturally display elements of them self that perhaps an adult may want to hide and change.

Barthes makes the statement that a photograph captures something which can never be repeated and of course this is true though Einstein said time is relative, and not absolute but I think in general terms Barthes is of course correct.

He breaks down the components of a photograph as i) the photographer, ii) the subject and iii) the viewer. The photograph he says is has studium and punctum. Barthes describes both and my interpretation of this is that the studium is initially what the viewer will see, perhaps what gains the viewers initial attention and gives context to the image, assuming the studium is sufficient. He then describes what makes a photograph special is one that has punctum, something that is not visible at first sight and needs to be discovered. Sometimes this discovery of punctum can cause an emotional reaction, or reaction as sharp as if pricked with something sharp.

I think its this punctum that my current tutor is encouraging me to consider and attempt to include as part of my photography e.g. invoke an emotion or memory, create or indicate a whiff of a story no matter how vague. I think this then makes the viewer work to try to understand the image, or perhaps using the photograph to connect to an historical thought or emotion or simply to just use the photograph as a stepping stone to another thought process.

Barthes does highlight a few elements in images as his personal punctum and whilst I may not always agree with his view of images, it doesn't matter because I think its what I find as the punctum in an image though it may not always be the same punctum for another viewer, or perhaps the base is but the rest individual. The feeling or thoughts invoked by the image may often be different but I think the point he makes is to consider this and to include this as part of the image. i could be wrong but its how I currently interpret what he is saying. It would be good to back to this book in the future and re-examine my thoughts on it

Barthes mother dies and his reflections change as result. I discover that he is not at all a social person and has spent much of his life caring for his poorly mother, shying away where possible from integration with other people. This could of course be a reason for why our views (Barthes and I) of studium and punctum may vary for different images as the elements of a photograph may invoke different thoughts because culturally or individually we may be different.

Following his mother's death he searches through his photographs looking to find an image of his mother that best shows off her character and one that he can use to remember her. There was an interesting part where he questioned dreams and when you see people in dreams do you really see them or do you just know what they look like. Cryptically this could also apply to a portrait captured by a photograph and perhaps returns to his opening statements in his book around portrait images not truly capturing the subject because the subject does not truly reveal them self to the photographer. As I mentioned at the start of my synopsis its almost ironic that the photograph he finds of his mother after her death that he fees most reflects the "truth of the face" he loved is one where she she is a 5 year old girl. There is something very romantic and pure in this revelation. The picture of his mother with her brother, his uncle, perhaps a studium, but the fact it invokes an emotional response as it appears to capture her essence, this punctum perhaps is only observable by Barthes, and perhaps his brother, maybe even her brother if he was still alive. Would the photograph of Barthes's mother invoke the same emotional response to other viewers? Not in the same way as Barthes experienced but knowing it was a child he grew to become someone's mother may invoke an emotion of life, and the inevitable death. The image itself may not invoke punctum in all but understanding its someone's mother and her death as a future parent caused much loss to her children would enable that puntum to be felt by many as they look inwards and the emotions they have for their own mother and wonder what she was like as a child, something we would likely not have seen Myself having lost both parents to cancer at young ages means they only saw 1 (for a short period) of 7 grandchildren and didn't really get to fully experience their roles as grandparents. These are the thoughts I might have had is seeing this image of his mother in a gallery where having looked at the image and understood it was someone's mother, I could close my eyes and then truly see the image and feel its personal punctum.

I found Barthes in his writings then went particularly morbid, perhaps still in mourning and unable to relieve some of his emotions by crying. he also seems to lose interest in the force of life and any particular reason for man's existence and and the existence of a potential supreme being.

I think Barthes started lose focus of what he thought made a photograph and instead began to associate a photograph with death, it captures something of the past and the unavoidable to be. The book also changes in that perhaps some elements at the start of the book are simply his theories and observations as the viewer, little of being the subject and none of being the photographer.  He moves from attempting to "interrogate the evidence of Photography" not from the view point of pleasure but from life and death. Its clear to me that in these statements he is focusing more on his mother, the loss her death has caused him and perhaps his own mortality.

This element of the book made me think of the TV series Sharpe, where Pete Postlethwaite who played Sergeant Hakes whom at various points in the TV series would take take off his hat to cry "mother" looking for help and support at the picture of his mother inside his hat.

Alas Barthes died at age 65 a month after being hit by a laundry van, some questioned if he lost the will to live whilst recuperating the chest injuries he suffered. 

Whilst a short book I found very interesting and that I could in the most part understand and reflect in some agreement of what he was saying. i wonder had his mother not died at this point she did whether Barthes' would have been different and if he would have reflected more on what a photograph was