Roland Gérard Barthes (12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980), I read in Wikipedia, was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, anthropology and post-structuralism.
I have to confess at this point that I had no knowledge of him until my tutor suggested that I read his views on photography. My starting point was to obtain a copy of his last published book, Camera Lucida. Quite curiously in the w/c 22/04/2013 OCA Weekender E-bulletin, Sharon Boothroyd refers to Barthes in her discussion of a TAoP student's work. I will refer later to this in its place in my thoughts on Barthes and his views, and by implication the collective views of the "photographic academia".
This is by no means an easy book to read! With perseverance, and use of a dictionary, I
managed to make my way through it. My
thoughts on this work are expressed below and I feel only scratch the surface
of an understanding of Barthes’ investigation into photographs. Having read this book once, I will put it to
one side with a view to reading it again in a few months time. I think my understanding will benefit from
this and I will be able to take a more comprehensive view of Barthes’ thoughts,
rather than the somewhat superficial expressed below.
Barthes had a long standing interest in
photography, but he only considered it in depth in his later years, after the
death of his mother. In one way or
another, there is reference to her throughout the book; in some way it could be
regarded as though the book is a eulogy to his mother, shaped through a
particular photograph, not given to the reader to see, which is of his mother
and her brother in “The Winter Garden”.
“The Winter Garden” was the term, Barthes explains, used at the time to
describe a conservatory. There is
another photograph which is referred to several times in this work. It is that of his mother and her husband. I found it a great pity that these photographs
had been omitted from this book as I struggled at times to visualise them from
his description.
The title of this book is rather cleverly
formed, as Camera Obscura is well known to being used in shaping photography,
as it projected an image, whereas a Camera Lucida is a device which was used to
assist artists in drawing. Curiously, I
recall having such a device as a child, though what ultimately happened to it I
do not know. In essence this was a
device which merged a projection of the subject together with a projection of
the paper on which the drawing is being made, allowing the outlines to be drawn
more accurately. As there is
considerable light loss, this device is only useful in good sunlight.
The book is devoted into a study of the
nature of photographs, their relationships with life and death and also with
other art forms such as painting or drawing. To Barthes, the subject of a
photograph had to have been real or existed at some point, whereas, to him
there is doubt about the reality or truth of a subject, when that subject is
depicted as a painting or a drawing.
This is understandable, though the truth of the subject may be
different, for example, the date and time of when the photograph is purported
or suggested to have been taken, may, in reality, be different. I have thought about where composites sit in
this, however, each element of a composite will have existed and it is only
their final placement in the composite which causes an issue as this is where
there is a divergence from truth or reality.
There are other examples in contemporary photography which have this
divergence from reality, all of which have been manipulated as in composites;
should these be counted as a photograph in Barthes’ world?
A photograph depicts that specific moment
in time which will not be repeated in life, however that moment
becomes recurring as it is repeated each time the photograph is viewed.
Barthes opens his book by referring to a
photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. He talks of his amazement that “I am looking
at eyes that looked at the Emperor”.
Looking at historical or old photographs, I can relate to this concept
and perhaps take it further by suggesting that I can feel being drawn into that
time, though not all photographs work in this way.
Early on, Barthes tackles portrait photography,
and considers that the subject has 4 states.
In the first place the subject is that who he or she think they are,
secondly they are how they want others to think of them, then there is the
state of how the photographer thinks of the subject at the time of taking the
photograph and finally how the photographer presents the subject when the
photograph is exhibited. I can certainly
see this in formal portrait photography, after all how often has one heard the
phrase “this is my best side” being said one way or other by your subject. Thankfully, when dealing with a model, this
does not arise so much, however, one could say that, in collaboration with the
photographer, the model will change their look through the use of make-up. The photographer will be viewing the subject,
perhaps, more as an object and changing their view through the use of light and
pose, certainly creating somebody different to the person conceived of
originally by the subject. Finally we
have the way that the use is made of the portrait in the way it is exhibited,
whether online or in a gallery, or perhaps in a book or an unframed print. The permutations nowadays are seemingly
endless, but all are designed to lead to that end-point which is how the
photographer wants that image to be seen by others.
Barthes moves on here to look at photographs as a whole and in the first instance he uses this photograph by Koen Wessing taken in Nicaragua in 1979.
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| Koen Wessing: Nicaragua, 1979 |
To me this photograph captures that moment with the juxtaposition of the nuns with the three soldiers. For Barthes, this photograph had a duality where there were two elements which seemingly did not belong to the same world, the nuns and the soldiers. This leads to the two elements, which run as the main theme through Barthes' work:
studium and
punctum. The
studium relates to the photograph as a whole, the range of meanings which can be derived from it and which would lead the observer to study the photograph. The
studium provides a reality which was observed here by Wessing. In this photograph is the second element, the
punctum. The
punctum is that which breaks the
studium or, punctuates it. In this case it is the nuns walking behind the soldiers.
Punctum can be described further as the detail in the photograph. Barthes refers to a photograph's
punctum as "that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)".
Barthes discovers a further category of
punctum, which is time. He illustrates this through the photograph taken by Alexander Gardner of Lewis Payne in his cell waiting to be hanged.
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| Alexander Gardner: Lewis Payne 1865 |
This photograph says that death is in the future, and it is this which disturbs the calm of the portrait of a young man. By the time Barthes saw the photograph, Lewis Payne had been dead for many years. This causes Barthes to review his thinking about the photographs he is viewing of his mother. These photographs say that she will die, so the photograph tells both of the future but is also the past.
Sharon Boothroyd refers to Barthes defining photographs as being polysemous and certainly they are, where a
punctum exists. Barthes says that there is no relationship between a
studium and
punctum and the latter may not always exist.
As I said earlier. this is not a book which can be understood immediately, there needs to be a period of reflection, though already I feel some of Barthes' thinking occupying my thoughts. Perhaps that is the
punctum to my internal
studium.
References:
Wikipedia entry for Roland Barthes
Camera Lucida, Reflections on Photography, Roland Barthes, Pub: Vintage Books
OCA Weekender E-bulletin, Sharon Boothroyd
Annotation by Kasia Houlihan, 2004
