Koen Wessing: Nicaragua 1979

Camera Lucinda: reflection on Photography

by: Roland Barthes

translated by: Richard Howard

    This book was really hard to get into. A lot of the terms are too much to comprehend in a single sentence. The abundance of all the terms also gets a bit too much to follow. Maybe the fact that it was translated, but in the first couple chapters it just seems like the writer doesn't even know the extent of the material he is writing about. It was very fragmented, it reminded me of the works of a post-modernist writers. It was very scattered with no clear direction. I do like how this book give a viewer new perspective to view a photograph and why people like certain photographs. I did like how he explains some of the personal reason why he like certain photographs. 

   One term that I like was when he discussed about Photography's relations to death.  "It's true that a photograph is a witness, but a witness of something no more."  I completely agree with that statement, photography is this personal connection that was a time, subject or memory that no loungers exist. 

I don't agree with someone of the statements that he made in this book. He voiced his opinion on the photos taken by photojournalists. "In my eyes they bore no mark or sign: their homogeneity remained cultural: they were 'scenes,' rather a la greuze, had not been the harshness of the subject." he finds the photographs as uninteresting. I feel like he is dismissing a lot of good photographs. While the purpose of photojournalist is to inform, there is a sense of beauty and art in the photos. These photos have more meanings and provide more change to the world than most of the photographs he mentioned. 

"The photographer, like an acrobat, must defy the laws of  probability or even possibility; at the limit, he must defy those of the interesting."

The book did get more engaging as in continued on. The terms that he defined provides new way to criticize a photographs. I just wish he just continued on the clarification on the terms. I understand that a the detail or punctum is what a lot of people draw their eyes to a particular photographs. The viewer are much more engage to the image if the details are able to draw them in.