This personal, wide-ranging, and contemplative volume--and the last book Barthes published--finds the author applying his influential perceptivenes...
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Mar 07, 2007
Alejandro
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while to many this book is another of barthes extended fragmentary ramblings on modern media, this is actually a touching novella about a solitary man's recognition of his own humanity upon the death of his mother. he so longs for transcendence, redemption, and eternal life and he prays it might come through the archives and the text. and yet he sadly worries it might not. and that his intellectual musings have somehow missed the point. if you ever wondered what in search of lost time was re
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Jul 10, 2008
Ryan
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Along with Susan Sontag's On Photography, Camera Lucida is one of the earliest and still most frequently cited analyses of the medium. This might seem strange considering how personal and 'literary' it is, but, whether for or against, academics continue to use this little book to make all sorts of exaggerated claims about visual culture.
As he acknowledges, Barthes' take on photography is determined by a phenomenological reduction. "...I decided to take myself as a mediator for a More...
As he acknowledges, Barthes' take on photography is determined by a phenomenological reduction. "...I decided to take myself as a mediator for a More...
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Feb 15, 2009
M.
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This is the first book of Barthe's that I've read as a whole that has fully resonated with me (though to be fair, it's only the second book-as-a-whole of his that I've read (the other being The Pleasure of the Text, which I feel a somewhat urgent necessity to re-read): I have mostly just jumped around with essays with him), but I really wish I could have read it [and understood it the way I understood it now:] earlier on in my undergraduate career. I feel like, had I penetrated what the book is
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Sep 19, 2011
Trevor
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This is a curious little book, and it really is a little book – only 119 pages. It is curious because it is two books. The first is a kind of philosophical discussion on the nature of photography. He says many very interesting things here – interesting in a philosophical kind of way. He starts with the basics and works his way up from there. For example, he says we can have three relationships to photographs: we can take them (he doesn’t take them so he has virtually nothing to say about th
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Apr 24, 2011
Brad
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Barthes believes in his own emotions. He is so sure of his reactions to certain photographs that he uses this as the starting point for creating a framework for analyzing photography. It is not about form, style or codes, but the interplay between two forces: his cultural equipment and its ability to give a general understanding of what’s referenced in the photo; and the details that cause “wounds,” giving the photo power.
This highly subjective approach allows the “Spectator” to find More...
This highly subjective approach allows the “Spectator” to find More...
Sep 14, 2010
Nathanael
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This book is not a view of photography as an art-form, but Barthes’ attempt to understand exactly why certain photographs snagged him, tugged at his soul. He distinguishes between studium, that quality that makes the photograph of passing interest, and punctum, the telling detail (a pair of shoes, the texture of a dirt road) that causes the photograph to seem to say more than it does. He suggests that it is so because the punctum gives hints of a fragment of time captured. Indeed, for Barthes th
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Aug 02, 2010
David
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I spent this afternoon looking through old black & white photos from the fifties taken by my father, of the extended family. My cousins, now dead or old, as they were when young, at birthday, Easter and Christmas parties, and my mother as an attractive young woman with her life before her. Of myself in one group photo, aged 1 year, somewhat annoyed at sliding off my cousin Janet’s 8-year-old knee as I try to read my book, believe it or not!
I’ve often thought this – that when you look More...
I’ve often thought this – that when you look More...
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Feb 10, 2010
A.
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Because I've found few books on theory of photography (please recommend some to me!), I had to read this one. It is Roland Barthes's ramblings on the experience of looking at family photos, or other functional (rather than artistic) photography he happens to come across, such as very old newspaper photos. There is little discussion of aesthetics, none of technique (besides Barthes saying he's hardly taken any photos himself), none of photographers active less than 60 years ago. It is primaril
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Feb 03, 2012
Matt
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If you read Camera Lucida looking for a deeper insight into photography, I fear you won't really find it. Barthes describes his approach as a phenomenological reduction -- and it is -- which reaches results that seem more obvious to us today than perhaps it was at the time of its writing. Following Barthes' musings on anything can be enjoyable, and it's interesting just to see him think things through; however, watching someone think things through involves a lot of backtracking, restating, sk
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Jul 19, 2011
Amanda
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Camera Lucida is a philosophical reflection on the medium of photography. I've been toting this copy around since freshman year of college - one of my professors recommended I read it for reasons I forget now. I am not a professional photographer, but I've engaged in the act of taking pictures.
But this isn't really about taking pictures, it's about the pictures themselves, and how photography can capture in a frame the absolute truth (in most cases) and mortality of a moment. It's about ho More...
But this isn't really about taking pictures, it's about the pictures themselves, and how photography can capture in a frame the absolute truth (in most cases) and mortality of a moment. It's about ho More...
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Dec 29, 2011
Jon
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Patronizing and solipsistic as a discussion of photography. Barthes spends ample time assigning Latin names to elements of what is, essentially, irony, identifies their interaction as either clever or lame, and then abandons them. Other elements of photography are not considered, and instead he marvels at the possibility that the subject of an old photo may still be alive. He so much as admits he knows not much about photography, and goes on to talk at great length about himself instead.
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Aug 15, 2009
Artifice
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What I found particularly interesting, while reading Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, was the thought of what a particular moment his analysis of the photograph was tied to. That we are now surrounded by a multitude of things that appear to be photographs, but are no longer, that are texts in precisely the way that Barthes argues the photograph is not (and can be literally “read,” a series of 1s and 0s, though the task is obviously beyond human power). We no longer see, or rarely, photographs th
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Jul 31, 2011
Phil
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I was a bit nervous about reading Barthes, as I always am when I approach a theorist for the first time, because I had no idea what his style would be like. But I found Barthes' style really enjoyable, even though he frequently dealt with reactions and definitions that were highly subjective, which makes it hard to work with his theories. Not that the theory itself was subjective, but it depended upon subjective reactions in order to determine what were "good" photographs (and I use th
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Dec 31, 2009
Eyoki
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I enjoyed this investigation by the philosopher Roland Barthes into what photography is and does, although there were times when i felt he was saying the same thing over and over again. His contrasting of the 'studium' and 'punctum' is interesting, with the latter being the (usually unintended) detail which disturbs the viewer, is interesting; but in the end it was this passage that stood out for me:
"Now, once i feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute More...
"Now, once i feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute More...
Feb 04, 2009
Lindsay
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"I dismiss all knowledge, all culture, I refuse to inherit anything from another eye than my own."
Read in one night, which was supposed to be a "research night," but this little diversion proved more meaningful than whatever I'd planned to read. Camera Lucida is about the intersection of theory and the personal: a meditative pursuit of the "essence of photography" by way of an old photograph of Barthes's mother that he found shortly after she died. It's More...
Read in one night, which was supposed to be a "research night," but this little diversion proved more meaningful than whatever I'd planned to read. Camera Lucida is about the intersection of theory and the personal: a meditative pursuit of the "essence of photography" by way of an old photograph of Barthes's mother that he found shortly after she died. It's More...
Mar 21, 2009
Rachel
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Not so much what I learned from this book, but what I learned from people who read this book - Designating something as a "great book" makes lesser academics willing to use key terms in non-logical settings. I love this book and its theories, but you must read it several times, return to it several times, before you can truly understand Barthes point. I've studied a LOT of Barthes...but when I come across people who have only read this book as a group assignment - it's quite sad. There
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Sep 27, 2011
It took me a little bit of time to get into this. Partially because I’ve gotten somewhat out of the habit of reading French theory, and partially because I really wasn’t sure to expect. As a comprehensive approach to the phenomenology of the photograph, it’s probably a failure. But as a lyrical essay, it’s quite wonderful. Barthes takes his own subjective, flawed memories and perspectives and is able to translate that inner thought into broader experiences. I sometimes think that Barthes was the
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Jan 13, 2012
Stefanie
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Barthes' Bemerkungen zur Photographie sind eigentlich absolut überflüssig. Aus der Sicht eines Bildbetrachters - nicht eines Fotografen - schreibt er sehr subjektiv, wie Fotos auf ihn wirken. Immer wieder kreisen seine Gedanken um ein Foto seiner bereits verstorbenen Mutter, auf dem er ihr wahres Wesen zu erkennen glaubt. So wird dieses dünne Büchlein für Barthes zu einer sehr persönlichen Abhandlung, die dem außenstehenden Leser nur wenig bieten kann.
Ich war sehr überrascht, als ich d More...
Ich war sehr überrascht, als ich d More...
May 26, 2010
Erin
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This is one of the few books I kept from graduate school, and I'm glad I did. Just as poetic, powerful, and unassuming as I remember. Part one sets up Barthes' theory of photography and can be dense if you haven't been reading theory lately. However, the hard work pays off in part two, when he applies his conclusions to a particular photograph of his recently deceased mother. All of the work of part one becomes a way for him to process his grief over her loss, and ultimately to come to terms
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Aug 03, 2008
Jordan
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What characterizes the so-called advanced societies is that they today consume images and no longer, like those of the past, beliefs; they are therefore more liberal, less fanatical, but also more “false” (less “authentic”)—something we translate, in ordinary consciousness, by the avowal of an impression of nauseated boredom, as if the universalized image were producing a world that is without difference (indifferent), from which can rise, here and there, only the cry of anarchisms, marginalisms
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Sep 15, 2010
Dawn
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*..The Photograph belongs to that class of laminated objects whose two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both: the windowpane and the landscape, and why not: Good and Evil, desire and its object: dualities we can conceive but not perceive..(p 6)*
I read this on the stinkiest couch in Brooklyn, breaking up.
What a beautiful book. Bordering on the sentimental sometimes, Barthes moves through the meaning of Photography. The thinking was so clear-headed and pla More...
I read this on the stinkiest couch in Brooklyn, breaking up.
What a beautiful book. Bordering on the sentimental sometimes, Barthes moves through the meaning of Photography. The thinking was so clear-headed and pla More...
Aug 22, 2010
Chris
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the climax: "Folle ou sage? La Photographie peut être l’un ou l’autre: sage si son réalisme reste relatif, tempéré par des habitudes esthétiques ou empiriques (feuilleter une revue chez le coiffeur, le dentiste); folle, si ce réalisme est absolu, et, si l’on peut dire, originel, faisant revenir à la conscience amoureuse et effrayée la lettre même du Temps: mouvement proprement révulsif, qui retourne le cours de la chose, et que j’appellerai pour finir l’extase photographique."
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Mar 16, 2011
Curt
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Barthes' classic meditation on photography. I can't believe it took me so long to actually sit down and read this book, and when I did, it's short enough to finish in one sitting. immensely interesting, but of course the most touching selections come in the 2nd part, where Barthes focuses on photography's relationship to death through the death of his beloved mother. Wonderful read. Insightful, though, I'm not sure his ideas about cinema are quite accurate.
Jul 15, 2010
Farzaneh
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جالب بود
در این کتاب بارت صریحن موضع گیری های پساساخت گرایانه شو رو می کنه
اینجا بارت کسیه که کاملا به حواشی می پردازه و می خواد بگه عکس اون مفهوم سنتی ش نیست و در یک تصویر ممکنه ناخن بلند ابژه عکس خیلی تاثیرگذارتر باشه بر ببننده تا مثلن صورت او یا چیزی که نیت تشدید و توجه عکاس بوده - بحثی که بیشتر وارد حوزه ی پدیدارشناسی نقد خواننده مدار و پساساخت گرایی میشه و از بارت يه تصوير دوست داشتني ميسازه، تصويري كه به قول خودش بتونه تو روزهاي سوء شهرت به كارش بياد
اين اولين ك More...
در این کتاب بارت صریحن موضع گیری های پساساخت گرایانه شو رو می کنه
اینجا بارت کسیه که کاملا به حواشی می پردازه و می خواد بگه عکس اون مفهوم سنتی ش نیست و در یک تصویر ممکنه ناخن بلند ابژه عکس خیلی تاثیرگذارتر باشه بر ببننده تا مثلن صورت او یا چیزی که نیت تشدید و توجه عکاس بوده - بحثی که بیشتر وارد حوزه ی پدیدارشناسی نقد خواننده مدار و پساساخت گرایی میشه و از بارت يه تصوير دوست داشتني ميسازه، تصويري كه به قول خودش بتونه تو روزهاي سوء شهرت به كارش بياد
اين اولين ك More...
Feb 10, 2009
Andy
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This is one of my first explorations into the more philosophical approach to examining photography. My prior readings largely focused on more technical aspects. Most impressing is Barthes' ability to resist synthesizing other forms of analysis and take an approach entirely his own that is both understandable and relatable. As such, I would not recommend reading Barthes' as a comprehensive critical theory for photography but merely as a well reasoned perspective. A quick read; easily read and re
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Aug 23, 2011
Adam
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Like many a photography undergrad, I gave this book only half of my attention the first time around. Shelley Rice's interpretation of it got through to me, though, and I now teach it to my classes and love it. It's a love story about losing a mother and describes the line between sentimentality and strict critical analysis as well as any other book I know.
Dec 14, 2009
Youngki.bear
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This book upsets me, because it trying to talk about what photography does, Barthes completely ignores the role of the photographer. He claims that the viewer "sees" certain things in the photographs he shows, but doesn't explain how the photograph allows this. It's very lovely prose, although I felt the urge to trip him while reading it.
Nov 15, 2009
Liz
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This was ok. I only read some for class. I felt like he was talking down to the reader and seemed a little condescending when speaking of photography. Although his analysis of what we feel when we look at photography is interesting, it feels very flawed in that he himself acts like he contains all the knowledge.
Oct 14, 2009
Quinn
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The impetus for writing Camera Lucida was the death of the author's mother in 1977. In the 50's Barthes had dipped into photographic criticism some, but this is considered his definitive exploration of the medium. Like much of Barthes, this is not a light read, perhaps even less light than Susan Sontag, whose early essays on photography Barthes refers to briefly. His approach to interpreting photographs stems from his background in semiotics and to a degree, his skill with language. A very insig
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Apr 06, 2009
Traci
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DIE!
In all fairness there are a lot of interesting points in this book. However, it was nearly impossible for me to read. I wanted to rip my hair out. Every passage I read I had to re-read at least twice.
For me personally, I prefer reading interpretations of Barthes rather than his actual words.
In all fairness there are a lot of interesting points in this book. However, it was nearly impossible for me to read. I wanted to rip my hair out. Every passage I read I had to re-read at least twice.
For me personally, I prefer reading interpretations of Barthes rather than his actual words.
