Total Death
I have become the object. Locked in a finite reality, I will never leave this field with the fence around it, the trees and hills behind it. I will never leave the sides of my children, or the space within the frame - the boundaries - of this picture. So when you look at this picture of me and my family, who do you see? Do you see me? Do you see me how I want you to see me? How the photographer wants you to see me? You don’t know if I am posing or have been posed, if I was caught off guard or I am purposefully distracted by whatever is off to the right. But this picture isn’t just about me; it’s about you, the spectator, too. If you don’t know me, maybe you are not pricked by this image. You may understand the studium, you may come in contact with the photographer’s intentions and choose whether you like or dislike the image and whether you find the formal qualities pleasing aesthetically or not. But whether or not this picture goes beyond that and gets into you, bruises you in a meaningful way, goes beyond the studium.
I exist in a different segment of history than you. You do not exist in this image, but you are allowed and asked to participate with it. Whether it moves you, whether there are details that puncture your thoughtfulness beyond visual acceptance, depend on what you bring to the picture. You read images within their context (what my field and clothing conveys to you), but you also bring your own cultural context and place in history to the interpretation and acknowledgement of the image. Ethnological knowledge is inserted into the image by what you know my sweater and hair wrap to say about me.
Through our three-way relationship (you, photographer, me), I have become something that does and does not exist. I am dead in this moment, frozen in your perception, whether it is authentically who I am or who the photographer wants me to be. In this moment I am dead, this instance of me belongs only to this image, and the “me” in it exists neither before or after, but remains the same as the exact moment when the photographer snapped the shutter and froze me in time.
Favorite Music of 2010
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2010 has been an odd, disorienting year for music. I have been buying,
collecting it for over 30 years, and this year, I finally am experiencing
the shift ...
13 years ago
1 comment:
This is an insightful and interesting interpretation of Barthes' theories and ideas. The form in which this reflection is written really drives home Barthes' idea of the photograph as an object with a life of it's own. Barthes' also talks about the meaning of the photograph changing from person to person and through time, which is touched on in the opening sentences of this response.
Barthes' writing in "Camera Lucida" covers a lot of ideas and issues and I think this reflection does as well. The writer has demonstrated a clear understand of Barthes' idea of the referent, the "death" of all photos and that meaning changes though time. The only thing I think the author of this reflection could be more clear about is the meaning and difference between the ideas of studium and punctum, which are integral to understanding Barthes'.
I know from personal experience and from listening to everyone in class that Barthes is difficult to read and make sense of. He has a lot of really interesting and through provoking ideas but he can at time be somewhat dense, repetitive and sporadic in his writing. I think that Katie's interpretation of what he says is really helpful to anyone struggling with this set of readings. Her writing clearly and directly addresses many of Barthes' most important and at times, hard to understand, points.
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