Camera Lucida

Camera Lucida is a philosophic-aesthetic exploration on the nature of photography as an art and a medium. Unlike so much writing out there on photography from the perspectives of seasoned photographers, Barthes is notably not a photographer, and as he says himself he has only been the subject of a photo and a viewer of photos. It’s an interesting perspective and perhaps he is better able to focus on the emotions that photographs evoke in him rather than looking at works through any technical perspective. At around 100 pages, it’s short and I read it in the span of an flight layover. Some parts of the works are abstruse, others are deeply personal and subjective that makes it hard for a reader to relate. At the same time, a few philosophical concepts Barthes introduced are deeply provocative.

One of those provocative ideas, the most notable of his book is the idea that an aesthetically valuable photograph has a studium, a subject intentioned by the photographer, as well as having this other aspect called the punctum, some kind of interesting or subtle detail that punctures the studium and gives the photograph depth that perhaps the photographer did not intend on. The studium of a photo could be a man staring stoically at the camera in a portrait, but the punctum could be the unique, subtly visible scar on his cheek. The punctum provokes more: perhaps the man is stoically looking or serious, but what does that scar say about him? Could he be stoic because of some incident involving the scar? The punctum just raised a slew of questions, curiosities for the viewer to learn more and investigate into the picture, and maybe the photographer didn’t even mean to show the punctum; or maybe the photographer even tried to cover the blemish but still left traces. Whatever the case, Barthes’ posits that the most aesthetically interesting works for him had not only the message behind the picture in its studium, but also some unique punctum bestowed by fortune rather than artistry.