Barthes: Examining Emotion and Time in Photographs

Part One:

Many photographs are, alas, inert under my gaze. But even among those which have some existence in my eyes, most provoke only a general and, so to speak, polite interest: they have no punctum in them: they please or displease me without pricking me: they are invested with no more than studium. The studium is that very wide field of unconcerned desire, of various interest, of inconsequential taste: I like / I don’t like. The studium is of the order of liking, not of loving; it mobilizes a half desire, a demi-volition; it is the same sort of vague, slippery, irresponsible interest one takes in the people, the entertainments, the books, the clothes one finds “all right.”

To recognize the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographer’s intentions, to enter into harmony with them, to approve or disapprove of them, but always to understand them, to argue them within myself, for culture (from which the studium derives) is a contract arrived at between creators and consumers. The studium is a kind of education (knowledge and civility, “politeness”) which allows me to discover the Operator, to experience the intentions which establish and animate his practices, but to experience them “in reverse,” according to my will as a Spectator.

– Page 27, the first paragraph of chapter 11

This passage is important to the text as it helps identify the difference between studium and punctum. The studium illustrates the intentions of the photographer. It has only a minimal effect on the viewer, not arousing any deep emotions but instead simply just sparking a small sense of appreciation or disapproval for the work. The analogy Barthes gives of people who view clothes, movies, and books as “all right” allows for easier understanding of his definition of studium. In comparison, punctum “pricks” emotions within the viewer. It is the wave of emotions that hits the viewer when looking at a particular photograph. This passage really helps differentiate the two and is, therefore, crucial to the text.

Part Two:

At the time (at the beginning of this book: already far away) when I was inquiring into my attachment to certain photographs, I thought I could distinguish a field of cultural interest (the studium) from that unexpected flash which sometimes crosses this field and which I called the punctum. I now know that there exists another punctum (another “stigmatum”) than the “detail.” This new punctum, which is no longer of form but of intensity, is Time, the lacerating emphasis of the noeme (“that-has-been”), its pure representation.

In 1865, young Lewis Payne tried to assassinate Secretary of State W. H. Seward. Alexander Gardner photographed him in his cell, where he was waiting to be hanged. The photograph is handsome, as is the boy: that is the studium. But the punctum is: he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been; I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake. By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the future. What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence. In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like Winnicott’s psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.

– Page 94, the first paragraph of chapter 39

At this point in the book, Barthes realizes that there is another element to punctum: time. Barthes explains that if the subject of a photograph is a living being, then there must be a time, whether past or future, where the subject dies. This means that when he looks at a picture of his mother, although she is alive in the picture, she is eventually going to die. This sparks a feeling of grief within Barthes, almost as if his mom had actually just died. Every photograph is connected to a set moment in time—a time when the subject is still alive; however, the subject will one day die and this adds to the punctum of the photograph. This passage is important because it builds onto Barthes’s previous claim about stadium and punctum, adding a new element to punctum that helps us understand what types of emotions photographs can trigger.

Question:

Which factors lead to the rift between the photographer’s intentions and what the viewer actually gets from the photograph?

Picture: