Barthes, Baudelaire, Sontag

It has been really interesting to read and discuss these articles, mainly because I admittedly do not have a great heap of prior photography knowledge. These papers were almost philosophical in some ways with their interpretations and judgments of photographs and photography in general. It was also interesting to see how the papers responded to each other as if in some sort of textual conversation.

Cameral Lucida: reflections on photography
Roland Barthes:
I had not realized the cleverness of the title until just now, “reflections” on photography seems to be almost a pun, about how photographs are reflections of reality, but maybe I’m just reading too far into things. In this piece Barthes writes about life and death in photography, most likely brought on by the sickness and eventual death of his mother. He brings up the idea of photographs being living things themselves, since they are composed of organic matter. He also contemplates the idea of his mother being child like in early photographs, and childlike in her sickness. He feels that while she is sick there has been a sort of switching of roles that has caused him to become the maternal figure and his mother to be a little girl in her weakness. He also states that even after his mother has died, she is not completely gone, rather just her soul has left, but the parts of her that could be captured via photography live on to eternity. It is also interesting to note that Barthes does not actually show any of the photographs with his writing, he only describes them. Perhaps this is a note on his idea of the “studium,” which is the element of the photograph that encompasses formal qualities such as time period and costume, and the “punctim,” which is the element of the photograph that “wounds” or emotionally touches the viewer.
I liked this idea of a living photograph that Barthes brings up. I had never considered photographs themselves to be living things, but I suppose that is because I come from a digital age, where photo prints are not as common as they used to be. Perhaps I will start getting some actual prints made with this kind of nostalgic idea in mind.

Baudelaire on Photography
Right away the title seems to announce that Baudelaire is on a rant again, and this time it is centered around photography. Opinionated Baudelaire believes that photography is a science, not an art and that in some ways photography is corrupting art. He accuses painters who use photographs as reference as being lazy. He also alludes to industry, and his elitist values, stating that if photographs can be mass-produced and anyone can have one, then they lose their value. Basically I feel that Baudelaire was kind of a mean old man who didn’t like the new technology which was being brought about, mainly because he didn’t understand it, or was just adamant about change. The points he make seem very protective of the fine arts, of which photography certainly is not one (in his opinion).

In Plato’s Cave
Susan Sontag:
Here again is a clever title, In Plato’s Cave, is a reference to the idea that photographs merely portray a reflection of reality like a reflection of the outside on the wall of a cave. In her writing Sontag extends the idea that photographs, in some ways, prevent or distance the photographer from actually experiencing reality. Instead, she argues, that the photographer is caught up in wanting to go places only for the sake of the camera, and a sort of proof that they, the photographer, had been to that place or done that thing. “Photographs furnish evidence” she puts it. Sontag voices her concern that the world merely becomes a potential photograph. She also suggests that photographers impose their ideas on their subjects, by taking multiple pictures but being unsatisfied until they find the one shot which matches their beliefs about how their subject “should” look. She also brings up the idea of the camera as a weapon of probing, capturing images without the agreement or awareness of the subject, bringing to light the idea of morality of photographs. Sontag concludes in her morose way, by quoting “today everything exists to end up in a photograph.” How depressing, I hope that perhaps there can be a healthy balance between experiencing a situation and capturing that situation for memory in photography.