Roland Barthes on photography

signifiance

punctumstudium

transformsrecords

cultural code“natural” noncode

ideologicaltraumatic

symbolicobvious or informationalcaptionphotograph

connotationdenotation

signified (meaning)signifer (representation)

CODEMESSAGE

Barthes: Camera Lucida Public / Private responses to the photograph Barthes and the “return” to phenomenology

To define the eidos of photography eidos = appearance, idea, constitutive nature, species What common basis unites all our otherwise different

“encounters” with photography?

The noeme or “essence” of photography What I “intentionalize” in photography is “that-has-

been.” The “intentionality of imagination,” or a purely personal

relation to the photograph

Barthes:the eidos of photography The essential nature of our subjective

experience of photography is defined by anirreducible singularity. To experience time as a singular and

unrepeatable event. “Every photograph is a certification of presence” “I want a history of looking” (12), or the

irreducibility of the emotional experience oflooking at photographs.

the Spectrum: the experience of being-photographed

the Spectator: the desire and emotion aroused by theact of looking at specific photographs

To experience time as a singular andnon-repeatable event.

“Every photograph is a certificate of presence.”

“. . . The Photograph . . . represents the verysubtle moment when . . . I am neither subjectnor object but a subject who feels he isbecoming an an object: I then experience amicro-version of death (or parenthesis): I amtruly becoming a specter” (14).

The studium and the punctum The studium refers to the range of

photographic meanings available and obviousto everyone.

The studium is: Unary. The image is a unified and self-contained

whole whose meaning can be taken in at a glance. Coded. Pictorial space is ordered in a universal

comprehensible way.

The studium is: Unary. The image is a unified and self-contained

whole whose meaning can be taken in at a glance. Coded. Pictorial space is ordered in a universal

comprehensible way.

The studium and the punctum The punctum (Latin) = trauma (Greek)

inspires an intensely private meaning “escapes” language--it is not easily

communicated through linguistic resources is “historical,” as an experience of the

irrefutable indexicality of the photograph The punctum as a “partial object” or detail

that attracts and holds my gaze. The photograph is a temporal

hallucination (115). the photographic and the filmic images

The punctum as a “partial object” ordetail that attracts and holds my gaze

The photograph then becomes a bizarre medium,a new form of hallucination: false on the level ofperception, true on the level of time: a temporalhallucination . . . .” (115).