Michele’s Reading List

Camera Lucida is Barthes’s study on photography’s nature and essence.

Throughout the book, Barthes tries to dissect photography, ending up with the discovery of two fundamentals characteristics a photograph should have: studium, being the social and cultural aspect of a photo, and punctum, being the detail that connects the spectator, not to be confused with the photographer or subject, and the photo at an emotional level.
Basically, there’s no Photo without a punctum, which in turn is a very subjective thing.

I’ve found the book to be very interesting and it helped forming my thoughts on photography which were shortly exposed in my Is Photography Art? post.

• Buy it from Amazon.com
• Buy it from Amazon.co.uk

This post was written 1 year, 6 months ago on December 11th, 2006 mid-afternoon.