Customer Reviews:
 Barthes on Art, not just Photography. August 23, 2006
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
Enclosed among these "Reflections on Photography" is a provocative theory of art in general, of what gives art the power to keep us looking. Barthes speaks of what he calls the 'punctum,' that aspect of a photograph (or, by implication, of any image, visual or textual) that pierces the viewer's consciousness, that wounds us like a dart of desire and leads to a blurring of the line between the aesthetic and the erotic. Here is an answer to Sontag's call for an 'erotics of art.' (Barthes and Sontag were friends, and it's quite possible that they influenced each other.) A great image, great art, has the power to wound us and fascinate us like a lover. And we as viewers must open ourselves to this power, like people in love. Indeed, one of the things Barthes is doing in this book is 'cruising' photography in the same way that he, a gay man, might have 'cruised' attractive men in the beaches, bars and baths of the 1970's. A wonderful book that deserves to be more widely read.
 Heavy going February 26, 2006
7 out of 21 found this review helpful
It is my belief that people who really know what they are talking about can explain their thoughts clearly. I cannot be sure if the fault in this book is with the original author or the translator, but it certainly does not measure up to this criterion. It may be of interest to photography academics, but I doubt if a photographer will get much out of it that is useful.
boring & pretentious crap! October 7, 2005
10 out of 49 found this review helpful
This book is a sure snooze-fest. Luckily for me I did not have to read the entire book for my undergrad art history photo class. We read selected chapters of the book.
They writing was horrible. Many parts were unclear. I had to reread what I read over and over. I can't stand this style of writing. Barthes attempts to come off as interesting and intelligent. Instead, he comes off as boring and pretentious.
Skip this book... try something else.
 Barthes Un-Does the History of Photography (and Himself) April 6, 2005
7 out of 12 found this review helpful
Roland Barthes, in his brilliant, moving, captivating book on photography, moves from a desire to find the ontology of the Photograph to the deepest regions of his psyche.
In his brilliant prose, Barthes raises the bar on how to engage with photography (be they art-photographs or snap-shots), and how to write about a photograph or photographs. It is no longer necessary to remove one's subjective, deeply personal response/s to a photograph/s. Within pages, Barthes deconstructs the objective/subjective binary, which opens the way one can write and talk about a photograph/s in a personal and/or academic setting.
In the section, I believe called *The Winter Garden,* which is at the end of his book, Barthes discusses his (recently passed) mother and her photograph, which he adores and yet does not re-produce in the book: be does not present her and re-member her, but rather rememories her (Morrison). What he writes about the photgraph and his mother (the-photograph-and/as-his-mother?) is absolutely moving and touching (I cried, and i still do ... no matter how many times I read this section of _Camera Lucida_).
Through all of this, the twists and turns in the book, you beging to realize, or at least I did, that the photograph is about touching (and I dont only mean his idea of the *punctum*)--but not in a unilinear fashion: the photo touches me as I touch it; there is a chiasmus. Indeed, this section--the entire book, actualy--is also a brilliant discussion, without overtly discussing it, on the phenomenological experience with the/a photograph.
Barthes' book has left an imprint on me--I guess it, the book, touched me too, which will not soon go away. It has helped me look at photographs (of all kinds) in a different way, through different lenses.
I would suggest that you read this book more than once (!), and you may want to read it in relation to one of his other books, which was roughly written at the same time, _The Lover's Discourse_. Indeed, Barthes is deeply moving and philosophical without any type of tedium or over-kill. Hmm, I would argue that Barthes has set the stage for more writing and meditating on love and the image, love and the other.
x-robt
The Transparent Camera November 6, 2002
40 out of 44 found this review helpful
Roland Barthes - Camera LucidaFrequently as I read through the brief, but provocative, Camera Lucida I would turn to the author photograph of Barthes on the back of the book. The further I got into Barthes' book the more I wondered just what he would have thought of the photo of himself. You see, in the pages of Camera Lucida Barthes explains how he sees most portraits as mere images that are far separated from the true identity, much less the soul, of the subject. And so I wondered, did Barthes ever see this portrait of himself? Was he the one who chose it for the back cover? Are the subtleties of this photograph effects Barthes consciously created as he posed for the camera? These questions that arouse in my mind went to the heart of, indeed were a product of my reading of, Camera Lucida. In this book Barthes explores the nature of photography, what sets it apart from other arts, what are its benefits, its liabilities. He also wonders what exactly a photograph is, what that cold image on paper truly captures. The book opens with Barthes wondering what is that one thing that a photograph, out of all other forms of art, possesses. While contemplating this he also muses that a photograph is forever linked to the object of which it is taken. That is to say that a photograph of a girl is always linked to that girl whereas a painting of a girl might very well be the construction of the author's mind and have no real world analog. Barthes does well to open with these two thoughts because they become the central insights on which he hangs the rest of his theories. Barthes is also concerned with how a photograph can exist, that is to say how it can become more than simply a sign pointing as a real world object, how it can come to embody that object on its own, how it can achieve, in a word, transparency. He sees photographs as dead objects, indeed at times is obsessed with this Death that he claims photographs confer on their subjects. It seems that somewhere inside Barthes is a desire to discover photographs that are not shadowed by Death; this is the transparent photograph he seeks. As Barthes investigates these theoretical propositions he beautifully blends blend cold theory and personal reflection. For instance, when Barthes recounts his experiences as the camera's subject, and we discover a shy, even vulnerable personality. Similarly Barthes evokes tender feelings when he recounts the touching effects of discovering what he believes to be the one true photograph of his mother. In Camera Lucida we see that the author is a man for whom ideas are not theoretical abstractions, but deeply felt concerns whose resolution is central to his well being. This organic blend of personal and professional reflection makes Camera Lucida a work of much intellect and much beauty. Camera Lucida is a slim book that carries a great deal of weight. It is a book that is highly recommended to anyone who is concerned with what separates a good photograph from a great one, as Barthes points a way past the proliferation of mediocre photographs to the truly great ones.
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