In Camera Lucida, the author, Roland Barthes, seeks to discover another meaning in photography. Barthes seeks to break down the art of photography to find something inside of it that doesn’t make photography plain. What captivated me was when he tried to explain the three players of photography in Chapter 4 of Part One on page 9, “Operator, Spectrum, and Spectator”. He clearly stated that photography consist of the photographer, the people looking at the photography, and the thing or person being photographed. The photographer must use his or her own “emotion” to take their type of photographs. Roland, on the other hand, never experienced this kind of emotion but rather only possesses two experiences: “ that of the observed subject and that of the subject observing…”.Yet, Roland Barthes also claimed that the spectrum of the photograph has a “rather terrible thing” which is the “return of the dead”. I am not sure by what is returning and how is the thing that is returning from the dead a terrible thing. I also question why Roland Barthes thinks he is different from other photographers. Is it just because he thinks of photography differently?
In Part Two, Roland Barthes began to talk about photography through his deceased mother. In Chapter 27 pages 65 to 67, “To Recognize”, Barthes explicitly stated that he missed his mother and never really could find her even in her photographs. Even though he admitted that the “brightness of her eyes” was “reserved” and “preserved”, yet he also claimed that he could not find her. I understand that he cannot bring himself to believe that his mother still exists in those old photographs. Roland Barthes compared these “false” images to a dream where things we dreamed of being “almost” within our grasp, which is why we tend to be disappointed. This comparison illustrates the deep grief that Barthes feels for the loss of his mother and how much he misses the real her. What I am puzzled about is why does he affirm that photographs do not have the same features as his mother. He seems troubled to find the “essential identity” of his mother and so I wanted to ask what is the “essential identity” of his mother that the photography lacks.
My question for this class is: why can’t we classify photography or photographs even though we rely on the object that is being photographed?
I chose this photo because I took it to capture a variety of details, hence, which one is the subject? The people, the trees, the hut, or the towering skyscrapers?
Dear Kaven,
I enjoyed what you wrote for section 1 of Camera Lucida because you not only interpreted what Barthes tried to say, but you also questioned what he did differently from everyone else. Additionally, I completely agree with your points from your section 2 portion that we sometimes tend to be disappointed because we dream something to be greater than what it was in reality.
Answering your question about the photo you took, the subject for me is either the gazebo or the city in the background. The gazebo fits more cohesively with the rest of the picture, which makes me feel as though it is the subject because it is also near the center of the entire image. The city in the background is also at the center of the image and it provides a contrast to everything else in the foreground, which makes the picture more interesting to look at.