Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes's Camera LucidaGeoffrey Batchen Roland Barthes's 1980 book Camera Lucidais perhaps the most influential book ever published on photography. The terms studiumand punctum,coined by Barthes for two different ways of responding to photographs, are part of the standard lexicon for discussions of photography; Barthes's understanding of photographic time and the relationship he forges between photography and death have been invoked countless times in photographic discourse; and the current interest in vernacular photographs and the ubiquity of subjective, even novelistic, ways of writing about photography both owe something to Barthes. Photography Degree Zero,the first anthology of writings on Camera Lucida,goes beyond the usual critical orthodoxies to offer a range of perspectives on Barthes's important book. Photography Degree Zero(the title links Barthes's first book, Writing Degree Zero,to his last, Camera Lucida)includes essays written soon after Barthes's book appeared as well as more recent rereadings of it, some previously unpublished. The contributors' approaches range from psychoanalytical (in an essay drawing on the work of Lacan) to Buddhist (in an essay that compares the photographic flash to the mystic's light of revelation); they include a history of Barthes's writings on photography and an account of Camera Lucidaand its reception; two views of the book through the lens of race; and a provocative essay by Michael Fried and two responses to it. The variety of perspectives included in Photography Degree Zero,and the focus on Camera Lucidain the context of photography rather than literature or philosophy, serve to reopen a vital conversation on Barthes's influential work. Contributors: Geoffrey Batchen, Victor Burgin, Eduardo Cadava, Paolo Cortes-Rocca, James Elkins, Michael Fried, Jane Gallop, Gordon Hughes, Margaret Iverson, Rosalind E. Krauss, Carol Mavor, Margaret Olin, Jay Prosser, Shawn Michelle Smith |
Contents
REREADING CAMERA LUCIDA | 31 |
THE PLEASURE OF THE PHOTOTEXT | 47 |
ROLAND BARTHESS MISTAKEN IDENTIFICATION | 75 |
Copyright | |
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Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida Geoffrey Batchen No preview available - 2011 |
Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida Geoffrey Batchen No preview available - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
antitheatrical aunt Barthes by Roland Barthes calls Barthes writes Barthes's mother Barthes's Punctum become Benjamin body Boudinet CADAVA AND PAOLA Camera Lucida CAROL MAVOR chambre claire child Collège de France concept Critical cultural dead death desire detail discussion EDUARDO CADAVA essay example experience eyes French Freud gaze GEOFFREY BATCHEN Hill and Wang History of Photography Howard New York Ibid Jacques Derrida Jacques Lacan Jane Gallop kind Lacan language Little History looking LOVE AND PHOTOGRAPHY Lover's Discourse madness MICHAEL FRIED necklace never object painting PAOLA CORTÉS-ROCCA Paris perhaps person picture Pleasure portrait prick Proust reading referent relation representation reproduced Richard Avedon Richard Howard Roland Barthes Roland Barthes's Rosalind Krauss sexuality shadow signifiance Sontag studium Susan Sontag theory trans translation uncanny University Press vernacular photography Victor Burgin viewer visual Walter Benjamin Winter Garden Photograph words Zee photograph Zee's