Whilst the concepts of ‘Stadium’ and ‘Punctum’ live on in both photographic vernacular as defining features of an image that works, the structure of ‘Spectator’, ‘Operator’ and ‘Spectrum’ introduces several questions especially in contemporary setting. Whilst these initial theories do live on in the critique of photography we do however begin to see the issues with Barthes approach to photography analysis. Bathes also introduces the structure of ‘Spectator’ (viewer of the image), ‘Operator’ (the photographer, and ‘Spectrum’ (the subject of the image), spectrum named for the relation to the word spectacle and the idea of the cameras ability to capture the ‘whole’ of the subject.

This personal theory consists of several key ideas, which have lived on in photography critical theory, such as ‘Stadium’ and ‘Punctum’ the former being the information presented in the image and the latter being the juxtaposition or counterbalance to what we infer from that information. A ‘Mathesis Singularis’, a single theory for each medium.Īt this point Barthes steps away from the existing concepts of semiotics, sociology and psychoanalysis, a point highly criticised in the future, to focus on his own personal interpretation of photography. Part one is clearly an academic approach, systematic and structural in his attempt to refine the medium into a set of rules that constitute the definition of photography as ‘art’.

This allows the artist the ability to look through the prism with one eye and onto the drawing surface with the other, a viewfinder of sorts.īarthes selects this title over the more commonly associated Camera Obscura due to his belief that a photographer has ‘one eye on the model, the other on the paper’ (p.106).Ĭamera Lucida is in some ways a contradictory text, split into two parts Barthes separates his distinct approaches to the goal of defining the, what Barthes names, ‘essence’ of photography. ‘ I wasn’t sure that photography existed, that it had a “genius” of its own’ Roland Barthes – Camera Lucida (1980)Ĭamera Lucida or La chambre Claire in French, the original language of the book, is a device created to assist in the drawing of objects and scenes through the use of a prism which refracts the incoming light in turn projected the desired view onto the artists canvas.

Camera lucida book