roland barthes camera lucida reflections on photography

The erotic photograph, on the contrary (and this is its very condition), does not make the sexual organs into a central object it may very well not show them at all it takes the spectator outside its frame, and it is there that I animate this photograph and that it animates me. Pornography ordinarily represents the sexual organs, making them into a motionless object (a fetish), flattered like an idol that does not leave its niche for me, there is no punctum in the pornographic image at most it amuses me (and even then, boredom follows quickly). The presence (the dynamics) of this blind field is, I believe, what distinguishes the erotic photograph from the pornographic photograph. The book investigates the effects of photography on the. It is simultaneously an inquiry into the nature and essence of photography and a eulogy to Barthes' late mother. But it is in searching back through photographs of his mother, after her death, that Barthes arrives at the essence, for him, of photography: one childhood picture, not reproducible (It exists only for me), but a just image. A proof a contrario: Mapplethorpe shifts his close-ups of genitalia from the pornographic to the erotic by photographing the fabric of underwear at very close range: the photograph is no longer unary, since I am interested in the texture of the material. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography ( French: La Chambre claire) is a short book published in 1980 by the French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes. Like a shop window which shows only one illuminated piece of jewelry, it is completely constituted by the presentation of only one thing: sex: no secondary, untimely object ever manages to half conceal, delay, or distract. It is always a naive photograph, without intention and without calculation. Nothing more homogeneous than a pornographic photograph. “Another unary photograph is the pornographic photograph (I am not saying the erotic photograph: the erotic is a pornographic that has been disturbed, fissured).

Roland barthes camera lucida reflections on photography