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Roland Barthes on photography
signifiance
punctumstudium
transformsrecords
cultural code“natural” noncode
ideologicaltraumatic
symbolicobvious or informational
captionphotograph
connotationdenotation
signified (meaning)signifer (representation)
CODEMESSAGE
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Barthes: Camera Lucida Public / Private responses to the photograph
Barthes and the “return” to phenomenology
To define the eidos of photography
eidos = appearance, idea, constitutive nature, species
What common basis unites all our otherwise different
“encounters” with photography?
The noeme or “essence” of photography What I “intentionalize” in photography is “that-has-
been.”
The “intentionality of imagination,” or a purely personal
relation to the photograph
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Barthes:
the eidos of photography
The essential nature of our subjectiveexperience of photography is defined by an
irreducible singularity. To experience time as a singular and
unrepeatable event.
“Every photograph is a certification of presence”
“I want a history of looking” (12), or theirreducibility of the emotional experience of looking at photographs. the Spectrum: the experience of being-
photographed
the Spectator: the desire and emotion aroused by the
act of looking at specific photographs
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To experience time as a singular and
non-repeatable event.
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“Every photograph is a certificate of presence.”
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“. . . The Photograph . . . represents the very
subtle moment when . . . I am neither subjectnor object but a subject who feels he isbecoming an an object: I then experience amicro-version of death (or parenthesis): I amtruly becoming a specter” (14).
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The studium and the punctum
The studium refers to the range of photographic meanings available and obvious
to everyone.
The studium is: Unary. The image is a unified and self-contained
whole whose meaning can be taken in at a glance. Coded. Pictorial space is ordered in a universal
comprehensible way.
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The studium is: Unary. The image is a unified and self-contained
whole whose meaning can be taken in at a glance.
Coded. Pictorial space is ordered in a universalcomprehensible way.
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The studium and the punctum The punctum (Latin) = trauma (Greek)
inspires an intensely private meaning
“escapes” language--it is not easilycommunicated through linguistic resources
is “historical,” as an experience of theirrefutable indexicality of the photograph
The punctum as a “partial object” or detail
that attracts and holds my gaze. The photograph is a temporal
hallucination (115). the photographic and the filmic images
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The punctum as a “partial object” or
detail that attracts and holds my gaze
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The photograph then becomes a bizarre medium,a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporalhallucination . . . .” (115).
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