"Margaret Cameron’s claim that photography qualifies as an art because, like painting, it seeks the beautiful was succeeded by Henry Peach Robinson’s Wildean claim that photography is an art because it can lie. " — Sontag, "On Photography"

On the Productive Use of Useless Categories

Some people treat a book like it's a gun in a car. ("A [text] that's really very [cool] can sometimes get into a privileged position and do [great collateral damage.]" (e.g. certain works by of Baudrillard, Derrida, Chomsky).) I'm not (concealed) carrying Sontag's On Photography on me now, (Those who do are also a menace to society,) but when I get to my copy you'll be sorry. This is what I'm thinking when I recognize that, frankly, it's kind of abhorrent how Barthes manages to be so prolix in the space of little more than a hundred pages — nota bene -> never rule out the possibility that the author will be talking about his relationship with his mother for the rest of the essay.

A missive (missile) from Sontag is perhaps not yet necessary for an investigation of Barthes's "Studium / Punctum," which already appears to be an unstable pairing. Barthes's Studium is, "that very wide field of unconcerned desire, of various interest, of inconsequential taste: I like / I don't like,"(12) which, in its use throughout the text, appears to describe a quality of 'technical competence' in (mostly) bad photography. Punctum is, "that [accidental detail] which pricks me [...] which attracts or distresses me,"(27) which, upon further elaboration, describes merely a matter of taste: 'I like / I don't like.' Of course, Studium is already a negative category (dark room), designed to set Punctum in relief (exposure). Corollary: among the twenty photographs included in the the text, none is a demonstration of 'mere' Studium — nor would it be easy to produce one, given absence-of-a-Punctum is not a stable category. Is a Punctum then just a detail in a photograph (Barthes's examples appear to privilege intimate male figures, though not exclusively), that 'I like' because 'it affects me in some type of way?'

Sontag's engagement with notions of falsification in photography would appear to further destabilize this category: "In the mid-1840s, a German photographer invented the first technique for retouching the negative. His two versions of the same portrait—one retouched, the other not—astounded crowds at the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1855. The news that the camera could lie made getting photographed much more popular,"(On Photography, 61) We are already thinking of the advent of digital alteration (and DSLR all-digital photography), which might give the lie to any captured image — that hand-on-thigh Punctum might be the product of prurient processing-in-post.

We are unnerved by the notion that the strongest Punctum can be turned back into Studium by a (dumb) refusal (e.g. that moment in Bernhard's Old Masters in which a stranger tells our chief character that he has the exact same one-of-a-kind painting also mounted above his own bed — a direct Punctum and an invitation to do Plot, which our narrator simply neglects to pursue.)

We can further conceive of an all-Punctum-no-Studium photograph (i.e. the all black/gray image which is the absence of all technical competence but which pierces the viewer when he receives the explanation that it's the recording of the background radiation permeating the cosmos) — a Punctum that is always lying dead in all photographs. One wouldn't do badly to think that, further troubled by this reality, "Punctum" would give up the ghost.

Yet "Punctum" somehow persists — though not much more refined than the truism, 'I like what I like.' Yet there's still an opportunity to put "Punctum" to limited use by juxtaposing Barthes's neologism with that [apocryphal] phrase of Beauvoir's: "The weak have never overcome the strong." This phrase, ostensibly false, presents an opening for an interesting synchronic analysis when we take for examination an 'exception' to the rule and then assert the rule again simultaneously. A so-called 'weaker' force routs a 'stronger' foe — therefore it was the stronger force in that moment, (perhaps due to the topography of that landscape, the flash of sunlight, the forced march). Rephrasing Barthes, we might say "Bad photographs never prick (puncture) me." This might, at least, turn a double take into a look at the photograph that's a little deeper.

The trick is to turn a positive value-phrase into 'the negative of a negative' - with "never" in the middle of the phrase:
-e.g. A complicated field of forces determines strength at any given moment --> "The weak have never overcome the strong." -e.g. The touching detail is the component of a photograph that determines its value (to me) as art --> "Bad photographs never prick me." -e.g. We are at least getting a little something out of a good book --> "Bad books never have to be read."

"if you’re going two ways / all you need / is one light / to move." — Eileen Myles

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This is, no doubt, an intelligent book, it just wasn't a pleasurable read for me.

Recommended by a prof when I described a series of family photos I'm working with.

The writing is, at first, a bit convoluted and challenging. However, I found that with patience I was able to hear Barthes in the context of my own experience with photography and the Photograph.

I came away with several pages of scribbled quotes in my journal. These for consideration as I work with two different image/photo-based projects: my Feminist Family Tree and The Body Catalog. ( )

I appreciate the philosophy here, even though there were points where I disconnected. Probably something I'll buy for my forever bookshelf if I ever have the space. ( )

this is a great work of essay and introspection but it doesn't really interest me as theory. the argument is too scattered, overlapping and backtracking, to form a coherent (to me) way of thinking about Looking at photos. also i find it interesting/frustrating that barthes is basically incapable of thinking beyond photographs of people (portraits or otherwise). but parts of this are deeply moving and with stunning turns of phrase, so, i liked it, just not for the reasons i assumed i might. ( )