This photo was taken by Susan Meiselas and was a part of her works titled Prince Street Girls, 1976–1979. Prince Street Girls began as a series of photos of young girls who stood at the corner of Prince Street in Lower Manhattan near the neighborhood of Little Italy. I choose this particular photo in Meiselas’ work of Prince Street Girls because of the punctum rather than the studium. The punctum as described by Roland Barthes is something that captures or animates the view of the photo or also wounds and pierces the view, regardless it is meant to be a detail within the artwork that arrests the onlooker’s attention. The studium is described as the rest of the photo or the remaining bit that compliments the punctum.

Personally, the punctum of this photograph for myself was the bubblegum that the girls are blowing up. This photo invokes feelings of satisfaction when I look at it because of the size of each bubble and the fact that they are all consecutively getting smaller from left to right. I’m not sure if Meiselas had intended to capture the moment as such however, this addition satisfies my need to see things in chronological size order. I also think that the punctum leads you to look at each individual girl in the photograph. Upon looking at the girl in the far left-hand side of the photograph you can see not much of her face, except for her eyes. Without reading more about the photograph and the series I would have not been able to tell that the first girl was, in fact, a girl. Evaluating her gender with simply her long, but boy cut hair and chubby facial structure led me to believe that the girl was a young boy. Despite fabricating a wrong assumption, the punctum allowed me to more closely analyze features of the girls because of its location with respect to the rest of the photo.

The studium for this photo is the urban background of Little Italy. I think the studium really describes the time and era at which this photo was taken. In the far background, you can see two individuals carrying out what seems to be a conversation on a regular day. You can not also help but notice in the more foreground the open hood of an old car. Both details of the photo make the photo seem as if it was taken in a close-knit community, where people publically conducted their life. Upon reading more about the photographer and about the collection from which this photo was taken, you learn that it is probably just a regular day in Little Italy with everyone else doing their daily business. I think both the punctum and studium play a larger than expected role in interpreting the picture. Although, many parts of the picture are subjective and up to the viewer’s discretion, the punctum and studium by Barthe’s definition allow the interpreter to start with specific details as a foundation to later interpret not only what they are looking at, but the meaning and (no pun intended), the bigger picture behind a photograph.