Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

Camera Lucida book was pretty hard to get through. I think mostly it was because it was translated from another language? But also, because it seemed as though Barthes was trying to have a conversation with me (the reader) but not giving me a change to respond to what he said. So, that was a little frustrating.


I enjoyed how in the beginning of the book, Barthes referenced how a photograph turns a subject into an object, something to be looked at and studied for a length of time. I enjoyed how around this same place in the book, he talked about how being the subject of a photograph, knowing that the lens is pointed at you, changes how you feel and act. He suggests that most people pose a certain way they know someone is taking a picture of them. A quote of page 13 gives more detail on this idea of his:


"The portrait-photograph is a close field of forces. Four image-repertoires intersect here, oppose and distort each other. In front from 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 work. In other words, a strange action: I do not stop imitating myself, and because of this, each time I am (or let myself be) photographed, I invariably suffer from a sensation of inauthenticity, sometimes imposture.”

A little later in the book, he talks about what attracts him to certain photographs or what intrigues him to make him sit longer and look. He defines the Latin word "stadium" as a 'general enthusiastic commitment.' This is a quote from page 26, in which he describes his attraction to photographs:

"It is by stadium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally (this connotation is present in stadium) that I participate in the figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions.”

I believe that anyone can enjoy and appreciate photographs with which they have something in common. Whether it's a thread of a memory of which the photograph reminds them, a familiar place, or a person in a photograph.


I think what Barthes wants photographers to do is to challenge what we know as boundaries. He wants photographers to think outside the box and do things that seem weird or crazy. Go beyond what we know about photography and push the limits of the medium and of our selves. However, I think that personally it's kind of hard for me to challenge the boundaries of photography because with the increased focus on digital photography, you can manipulate images so they are totally unrecognizable which I don't really enjoy. I'm much more of a purist photographer and like to look for the interesting things that are in the world we live in, rather than create interesting things.


"Such are the two ways of the Photograph. The choice is mine: to subject its spectacle to the civilized code of perfect illusions, or to confront in it the wakening of intractable reality.” (page 119)