Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author has several interesting thoughts, for instance, “the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture.” We do use our baggage of knowledge – experience and erudition – when creating something – text or art. Sometimes it is even quite difficult to distinguish if the idea that we have comes from accumulated sources or is original to us, thus when creating something; we also sometimes discover that something we have been working on has actually been done earlier. It is not always a simple ignorance, it proves what Barthes says. Also, by announcing the death of the author, Barthes focuses on the reader; if I would look for some parallels to the photography (or visual arts), then it would mean that in creating an art work I should focus on the viewer. Or, at least, that the viewer would be the main recipient of the work. It corresponds to the idea that a finished artwork no longer belongs to its creator.
The last time I read Camera Lucida must be years ago; moreover, I read it in French, so this is quite a fresh rereading. Barthes’ approach to the matter of photography is profound from the beginning – being interested in photography, he wants to find how it is essentially different from the mass of images. Barthes looks for possible ways how to define that and understands from the first method – classification – that it is defective. So often, the first question from someone to whom I would say that I am a photographer would be: “What kind of photography do you do?” It is so limited, I prefer to answer with the themes, questions that I am interested in. Barthes says that photography is unclassifiable and searches for the source of the disorder. Barthes explains that it is easy (and only possible) to talk about a photograph and not the Photograph (Photography) which practically sounds like a divine unity. He continues by saying that the Photograph “is never distinguished from its referent”, they are joint together, two things that cannot be seen separately.
He then asks a compelling question – why do we choose to photograph one specific thing out of all the possibilities? It could be explained by an artistic vision, sensation, unconsciousness or a need. I am not sure that there is a necessity to explain that. It is more of a rhetorical question. Unless, of course, it influences the aesthetic or conceptual rendering when a photograph is put together with another one. Although that is another question. if a photograph is powerful as it is, the question why it was photographed (instead of another frame) is unnecessary.
Barthes also reveals when reading about photography he actually thinks about a particular photograph he admires (which is probably in opposition to what he tries to find himself theoretically on Photography); nevertheless, he would rather be without culture than not think that way. This makes him very human, not a scents at unreachable level. So, I will show one of the countless photographs I love. It is one that came to my mind when reading the last paragraphs of Barthes’ text.
Duane Michals
I also think that Duane Michal’s way of looking is an example of what Barthes underlines on photography, i.e., that “it is not what we see,” it is the simulacrum of the Photograph. Then Barthes states that “a photograph can be the object of three practices: to do, to undergo, to look” but as not being a photographer himself, he refuses to talk about doing. So he talks about being photographed and how, knowing that, he poses. It is rather interesting how we all change in awareness of being photographed, of being in front of a lens. Even the most natural models who are not so intimidated by the fact are still conscious of being photographed and that changes everything. Besides, as Barthes states too, the photographed person would ideally want to see himself in the image, that “my image should always coincide with my “self”” which is not possible as the image is not the person. I would like to cite Duane Michals on this subject: “How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearances of trees and automobiles and people with reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.” It is so well said because at the end, we don’t photograph the reality, we photograph how we see it, thus, it is a reflection of ourselves. Barthes goes further when talking about the portrait taking – as there are so many ways to look at the person taken in a photograph from the perspective of the self and the photographer, he states that the person “experience a micro-version of death.” This category has always seemed exaggerated to me; the only way I look at it is again through the weird linguistic choice of English language – a synonym of “to photograph” which is “to shoot”. I agree with Barthes on the pleasure of the sound of camera; I also enjoy it enormously. Here. he also uses another term – “studium” – to talk about his interest in photography, where it arrises from. And the other element (because Barthes defines that there are two elements, the duality that attract) is “punctum”. Studium attracts the interest, punctum is its distraction.
The third text – Barthes’ Image Music Text talks about “the photographic message” in a press photograph. One important and interesting point in looking at a press photograph is that is is accompanied with text, thus the message of the photograph is not the same as if the image would be without the text. Then Barthes defines what photographic message is and states that it is a continuous message without a code. He readdresses the duality of an image, here, talking about the double message that an image contains – “a denoted message, which is the analogon itself, and a connoted message, which is the manner in which the society to a certain extent communicates what it thinks of it.” As the two messages – one with the code, another without – coexist, Barthes names this “the photographic paradox”. As it is interesting and easy to connect with Camera Lucida text, Image Music Text is dry and theoretical and I find it more difficult to give any examples or associate my experience with this writing. Yet, Barthes himself admits that “there is no certainty from the point of view of a subsequent structural analysis..”. Therefore he gives examples for structural terms which are trick effects, pose, objects and photogenic, aestheticism and syntax. One thought that I found interesting when Barthes talks about objects is that “objects are accepted inducers of associations of ideas.” It is true that we feel free (or rely on more symbolic, traditional presumptions) to associate things with certain qualities.
Finally, it is interesting what Barthes has to say about the relation of image and text. Firstly, “the text constitutes a parasitic message designed to connote the image.” Probably the most important text to an image is its caption. The words, as Barthes says, cannot duplicate the image but they certainly have a signification. So, at the end, Barthes resumes that the reading of a photograph depends on the reader’s knowledge but this presumption opens more questions on how people actually look at and read the photograph.
Thoughts on Photography 