Sunday, December 21, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Camera Lucida
I just finished reading Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, an amazingly intellectual text that give some great insights into the cherished medium of photography. Below are some of my favorite passages and quotes:
"The portrait-photograph is closed field of forces. Four image repertoires intersect here, oppose and distort each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art."
"Since every photograph is contingent (and thereby outside of meaning), Photography cannot signify (aim at generality) except by assuming a mask. [...] This is why the great portrait photographers are great mythologists"
"Ultimately- or at a limit - in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. "The necessary condition for an image is sight," Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: "We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes. The photograph must be silent (there are blustering photographs, and I don't like them) : this is not a question of discretion, but of music. Absolute subjectivity is achieved only in a state, an effort, of silence (shutting your eyes is to make the image speak in silence). The photograph touches me if I withdraw it from its usual blah-blah: "Technique," "Reality," "Reportage," "Art," etc.: to say nothing, to shut my eyes, to allow the detail to rise of its own accord into affective consciousness."
"The Photograph does not necessarily say what is no longer, but only and for certain what has been."
"The photographic image is full, crammed: no room, nothing can be added to it."
"If I like a photograph, if it disturbs me, I linger over it."
"The photographic look has something paradoxical about it which is sometimes to be met with in life: the other day, in a cafe, a young boy came in alone, glanced around the room, and occasionally his eyes rested on me; I then had the certainty that he was looking at me without however being sure that he was seeing me: an inconceivable distortion: how can we look without seeing? One might say that the Photograph separates attention from perception, and yields up only the former, even if it is impossible without the latter; this is that aberrant thing, noesis without noeme, an action of thought without thought, an aim without a target."
"The portrait-photograph is closed field of forces. Four image repertoires intersect here, oppose and distort each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art."
"Since every photograph is contingent (and thereby outside of meaning), Photography cannot signify (aim at generality) except by assuming a mask. [...] This is why the great portrait photographers are great mythologists"
"Ultimately- or at a limit - in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. "The necessary condition for an image is sight," Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: "We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes. The photograph must be silent (there are blustering photographs, and I don't like them) : this is not a question of discretion, but of music. Absolute subjectivity is achieved only in a state, an effort, of silence (shutting your eyes is to make the image speak in silence). The photograph touches me if I withdraw it from its usual blah-blah: "Technique," "Reality," "Reportage," "Art," etc.: to say nothing, to shut my eyes, to allow the detail to rise of its own accord into affective consciousness."
"The Photograph does not necessarily say what is no longer, but only and for certain what has been."
"The photographic image is full, crammed: no room, nothing can be added to it."
"If I like a photograph, if it disturbs me, I linger over it."
"The photographic look has something paradoxical about it which is sometimes to be met with in life: the other day, in a cafe, a young boy came in alone, glanced around the room, and occasionally his eyes rested on me; I then had the certainty that he was looking at me without however being sure that he was seeing me: an inconceivable distortion: how can we look without seeing? One might say that the Photograph separates attention from perception, and yields up only the former, even if it is impossible without the latter; this is that aberrant thing, noesis without noeme, an action of thought without thought, an aim without a target."
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