What is a Photograph?

In his book1 Barthes makes a whole range of statements about Photography as he searches for the essence of Photography - that which makes it ‘itself’. He was not sure that “Photography existed, that it had  a ”genius”of its own” ...........I wanted to learn at all costs what Photography was “in itself”, by what essential feature it was to be distinguished from the community of images”.2

Throughout his book he makes a number of assertions about the nature of a photograph (he distinguishes between a photograph and the Photograph, the latter term referring to all photographs as a body, which raises the question - What is a photograph?

”Whatever it grants vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible: it is not it that we see”.3

If we do not see a photograph what is it that we see?  I  interpret the word ‘see’ as being different from ‘looking’ in that ‘seeing’ requires an interpretation or understanding of the image before us i.e. some positive mental activity. Seeing requires us to carry out an analysis of what is before us and a selection process as we zone in on those elements within the image that interest us. [The corollary of this is that we zone out other elements i.e. we do not ‘see’ them]. We are products of our culture and any analysis necessarily requires some level of understanding - the need to place the subject matter within our cultural framework. Depending upon our predilections we may concentrate upon the buildings in the background or the young lady sunbathing or granddad with his handkerchief on his head. Only on those rare occasions when we are required to say something about everything within the photograph, including the technical elements such as composition, do we see the whole but even then we divide the image into its many components and talk about them individually.

A photograph is both unique and universal. It is unique in the sense that what we ‘see’ in the photograph is personal to us. Even within the same general culture e.g ‘Western’ or ‘Northern’ or ‘Geordie’ each individual is a unique being because everyone’s experiences are different and what piques our interest is different. Its universality lies in the fact that almost everyone would respond to the question What is it? with the answer “a photograph” if shown one.

Barthes moves from a quest to discover what makes Photography unique through a study of photography as a whole to the study of those few photographs that he was sure existed for him. Even this move from the general to the particular failed to provide him with the understanding that he desired and towards the end of the book he concentrates on just one photograph - that of his mother as a five year old child. It is interesting to follow his changing thoughts about the nature of Photography beginning with his awareness that some images interested him slightly whilst others interested him “powerfully”

“..a certain photograph can....interest me slightly; if another photograph interests me powerfully, I should like to know what there is in it that sets me off.5

He includes a quote from Sartre:

“Newspaper photographs can very well ‘say nothing to me’......Though the persons whose photograph I see are certainly present in the photograph they are without existential posture. Moreover, cases occur where the photograph leaves me so indifferent that I do not even bother to see it ‘as an image’. 6

After further consideration Barthes reaches the realisation, for him, that the level of interest he feels for a photograph is reliant upon two co-existing elements the studium and the punctum. He offers the following explanation:

“ The first....a consequence of my knowledge, my culture..I can take a kind of general interest......my emotion requires the rational intermediary of an ethical and political culture......[the] word  is ‘studium’..application to a thing, taste for someone, a kind of general enthusiastic commitment, of course, but without special acuity. The second element will break (or punctuate) the studium This time it is not I who seek it out.......it is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me".7

The studium is of the order of liking something but not loving it. The term can be applied to all photographs at a universal level but as the quote from Sartre shows it cannot be applied at the individual level. Some photographs have no impact on us personally.

Although punctum is an individual response it can also be seen as a universal because we cannot exclude the possibility that someone somewhere will be ‘pierced’ by any particular photograph. Equally the punctum of any particular photograph may not be the same for everyone indeed if Barthes reporting of the effect upon him of a family portrait shown on page 44 of the book is accurate then it can change for an individual. Barthes first offers as the punctum for this picture the belt worn low by one of the women and her strapped pumps but he does not understand why this should be so. However later he claims that it was neither of these but that the real punctum “was the necklace she was wearing; for (no doubt) it was this same necklace (a slender ribbon of braided gold) which I had seen worn by someone in my own family” 8. Unfortunately the necklace is a string of pearls which brings into question the accuracy and truthfulness of Barthes writing.

In the second part of the book beginning at page 63 we find that from a few photographs he now moves to derive all Photography (its “nature”) from the only photograph that assuredly existed for me 9. This unique photograph was of his mother at the age of 5 in a Winter Garden and in which he discerned all those qualities of his mother that he remembered and which he had failed to find in all other photographs of her. The existence of this photograph has been questioned (Olin 2011) because it is not reproduced in the book. Barthes reasoning is that the photograph only exists for him and for others it would be of only passing interest (a studium).

[I ask myself whether the existence of the photograph is important. Barthes describes it in detail and for him it clearly ‘existed’. He has a mental image that is as strong as a photograph in front of him. As Barthes claims we see a photograph better when we close our eyes or when it is not there. Is this not what Barthes means when he says that we do not see a photograph? Is it that we see the mental image and that we take that mental image to represent the photograph? It would also explain Barthes mistake in identifying a string of pearls as a braided gold necklace. It is known that our memory is imperfect and that we are prone to create an image that is more in line with our expectations and desires than the ‘reality’. One has only to think of witnesses to a dramatic event such as a mugging or assault where 10 witnesses will give 10 different accounts of the same thing even to the addition of something or someone that was not there.]

In stating that the Winter Garden photograph only exists for him - presumably having both studium and punctum - Barthes allows us to draw the conclusion that not only that all photographs are unique to each individual i.e. that any photograph exists in almost an infinite number of states but also that all images have both studium and punctum. There is no universal truth that distinguishes a photograph and that there is no universal element that allows us to discuss the Photograph.

References

1. Barthes R (1980) . Camera Lucida. Translated edition (2000) London Vintage
2. ibid p3
3. ibid p6
4 ibid p6
5. ibid p9
6. Sartre P (1940) Psychology of Imagination Unknown
7. ibid p26
8. ibid p.53
9. ibid p 73

Bibliography

Barthes R (1980). Camera Lucida. Translated Edition (2000) London Vintage

Batchen G (ed) Photography Degree Zero - Reflections on Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida. (2011) MIT Cambridge Mass