civilized ku # 900 ~ the mnemonic powers of ordinary snapshots
Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 11:28AM 
Early Spring window view ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenOn the entry civilized ku # 898, Jeff Lansing wrote:
Apropos of nothing: You have referenced Barthes frequently. Thought you might find this interesting.
Hey, Jeff - thanks for the link. Indeed, I did find it interesting and well worth reading.
True be told, I have long ago lost my copy of Camera Lucida. I haven't re-acquired it simply because so much of it can be accessed online. For all I know, the entire book might even be available online (it was a short book).
But that said, I am always interested in reading about what other readers have to say regarding their reading of the Camera Lucida. Just like I like to read (but am so often disappointed by the lack of response) the opinions of others regarding what I have to say or pass on here on The Landscapist. IMO, the exchange of informed ideas, is how we best learn and grow.
In any event, I have pulled out a few excerpts from the linked article for your consideration and, hoping against hope, your comments (FYI, all quotes are by the article's author unless otherwise attributed).
Roland Barthes declared that "in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes."
It seems to me, in light of Barthes' ideas about studium and punctum - studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph - the manifest subject, meaning and context of the photograph, punctum denoting the wounding / piercing, personally touching detail that holds our gaze without condescending to mere meaning or beauty and which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it, looking away or closing your eyes in order to see a photograph well is a technique that directs one's attention away from the visual / obvious and toward an inner connection to any awareness of piercing, wounding, or personally significant affect(s) the picture might hold for the viewer.
This purely subjective response, which demonstrates a "strange air of searching and susceptibility" - and approach that "in academic terms [is/was] quite scandalous", caused art critic Martin Herbert to state, "I don't go looking for 'ideas about photography' in that book; I read it for a certain kind of vulnerability."
The notions of "strange air of searching and susceptibility" and "a certain kind of vulnerability" that come from reading Camera Lucida are directly related to the deeply personal and quite emotionally touching nature of Barthes quest - the idea of connecting to his mother, after her then recent death, via looking at pictures of her. Barthes looked at many pictures in which his mother looked objectively like herself. But it wasn't until, "At last, he discovers her true likeness, the 'air' that he remembers, in a picture of Henriette aged five, taken in a winter garden in 1898 ... In narrative terms, it's an astonishing moment, comparable to the onrush of memories as madeleine meets teacup in Proust, or the scene in Citizen Kane when the maddened Kane first grasps the snow globe, emblem of all he has left behind."
This revelatory experience lead Barthes to believe that "every photograph is ... a memorial; the very essence of the medium is its spectral conjuring of death-in-life." That the "mnemonic powers of ordinary snapshots" are indeed very powerful.
For another look at studium and punctum and the wounding / piercing "mnemonic powers of ordinary snapshots", you should also read this article.
While I don't believe that every photograph is involved in the "spectral conjuring of death-in-life". there is no denying that every photograph is a depiction of what was and in that sense they are, indeed, "memorials".
Reader Comments (1)
I've probably understand only a fraction of Barthes' book (but then, even Mike Johnston has admitted he needed several approaches), but Barthes' explanation of the subjectivity of impact of each image has taught me a great bit of carefulness when it comes to the reaction of other observers of my images. And I've learned to trust more my 'gut feelings'. And I found the 'Camera Lucida' an important opposite point of view to 'On Photography', attributing photography a more positive (and way more complex) functionality than what Sontag had in my opinion left over from it.