Roland Barthes sets out to find what is unique about photography as a medium, and he does it through personal reflection instead of theory alone. He distinguishes between the studium, the general cultural interest a photograph arouses, and the punctum, the small detail that pricks the viewer personally. In the second half, written after his mother's death, he searches through old family pictures for the true image of her and finds it in a photograph of her as a five-year-old in a winter garden. He argues that a photograph always says that its subject has been.
Readers of photography, art, and cultural criticism will find a short, concentrated book that has shaped how people talk about images. It is also a moving piece of writing on grief.
Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and open-ended; a demanding read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1980
- Publisher
- Gallimard
- ISBN
- 9782070205417
- Language
- FR
