Assignment 011: Roland Barthes

Roland Gérard Barthes

Bio: Roland Barthes was born in 1915 in Normandy.  He was a philosopher, critic, and French literary theorist. Barthes was a famed thinker.  His ideas influenced many different schools of thought to this day.  Some schools of theory that he influenced were structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and post-structuralism.  His essay The Death of the Author (1968) is recognized as his best-known work.  This essay is often considered a great transitional work for Barthes in searching for some kind of significance with the culture of the world. 

 Camera Lucida

In Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, he describes the workings of an intriguing photograph to him in great depth.  He found that the little pieces of a photograph pulled together the image in a way that made the viewer interested.  Without these different kinds of connections and details the image didn’t hold the viewers attention.

The reading opens with Barthes discussing a photograph by Koen Wessing of soldiers with nuns walking in the background of the image.  The idea of these two completely separate entities belonging together in this world caught his attention as a viewer.  While he claims the image meant nothing to him, it forced him to think.  Barthes described the image as, “I understood all at once that this photographs adventure derived from the co-presence of two elements.” (23)

The way that he sees images that deal with raw, emotional subject matter in a distant way intrigues me.  Reading about what intrigued him has intrigued me and made me think about how I see different art.  Barthes felt that these photographs were mere scenes that simply existed to him, and the fact that something was just there is what drew him into the image.

“What I feel about these photographs derives from an average affect, almost from a certain training.” (26) This quotation made me wonder about the way we view art today, especially in an academic setting.  Do we criticize work the way we do because we have been trained to do so?

Stinging, difficult moments make a photograph; I believe this statement to be completely true. For Barthes the details, or the punctum intrigued him.  For me, it is the curiosity of knowing more about the subject matter, and without that intial sting how else would I be drawn in?  Barthes describes punctum as “sting, speck, ct, 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) He believed that noticing this punctum was not simply where your interest derives, but if you can pinpoint this detail of a photograph you understand the photographer.  Whether or not you are agreeing is different, but if you can find this detail you have understood their meaning.

My favorite quote of Barthes from Camera Lucida, is “by the mark of something, the photograph is no longer ‘anything whatever.’” (49) I am not sure how to interpret this quotation, or for that matter, a good amount of this reading.  I am, however, very intrigued to read more into Barthes and his theories.  I felt connected to his ideas about looking at photographs, and equally confused.