Camera Lucida Chapters 25-30 25 Finding The Winter Garden Photograph - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Camera Lucida

Chapters 25-30

25 Finding The Winter Garden Photograph

...after my mother’s death... I was going through some photographs. ... I expected nothing from these “photographs of a being before which one recalls less of that being than by merely thinking of him or her” (Proust). (p.63)

• overall goal: to discover if photography exists
• not just conjures memory but speaks to the uniqueness of

photography as a medium

• Grief/mourning will be the mask that is applied to photography to

make it exist for Barthes

26 Photography & History

“With regard to many of these photographs, it was history which separated me from them... I could read my nonexistence in the clothes my mother had worn before I can remember her.” (p.64)

• recognition of history vs memory: story vs details

I realize I was not there vs. I remember my mother as such and such

• Objective detachment via history?
• Is history objective? is history provable?
• Can memory be objective?

26 Photography & History

“History is hysterical: it is constituted only if we consider it, only if we look at it - and in

• rder to look at it, we must be excluded

from it. “ (p.65)

• photography becomes a means by which to “constitute” History - to

make it exist

• can this relationship work both ways
• photography as evidence

27 Photography & Dreams

“And here the essential question first appeared: did I recognize her?” (p.65)

• can Barthes make photography work as he has outlined in part one?
• can the genius of the subject (uniqueness) be recognized via a

photograph?

• can the photograph transcend the referent - and become “the thing

itself”(p.45)

• can a photograph allow the spectator to discover the spectre? - can it

exist?

27 Photography & Dreams

“...[in dreams] I know it is she, but I do not see her features (but do we see, in dreams, or do we know?). (p.66)

• to see something is to know it?
• sight as proof
• does it exist? Can his mother exist via a photograph?

28 Finally - The Winter Garden Photograph

“‘Not a just image, just an image,’ Godard

• says. But my grief wanted a just image, an

image which would be both justice and accuracy:... just an image, but a just image.” (p.70)

• the pose is the vehicle by which Barthes finds his mother

28 Finally - The Winter Garden Photograph

“... the winter garden photograph was indeed essential, it achieved for me, utopically, the impossible science of the unique being.” (p.71)

• one image to rule them all
• this photograph - the winter garden photograph Exists!

30 One image to rule them all

“I therefore decided to “derive” all Photography from the only photograph that assuredly existed for me, and to take it somehow as a guide for my last investigation.” (p.73)

read chapter 30 aloud...