- Publisher
- Hill and Wang
- Published
- 1981
- Shelf
- photography: Criticism
- ISBN
- 9780374532338
Criticism
Camera Lucida
Roland Barthes
Barthes hunts for what makes one photograph pierce him, using a picture of his mother that he never shows you.
Why read it
The studium and the punctum (the part of a photograph you can explain, and the detail that ambushes you) is the most useful pair of terms in criticism, because it separates a picture that is well made from a picture that works. Written in grief, months before his death, and it shows.
Why own it
Short, strange and personal, and the book photographers argue with for life. Owning it means having the terms to hand at the moment you are trying to say why this frame, out of a set of forty, is the one.
Who it is for
Photographers, picture editors, and anyone choosing between two good images.
Reading order
Book 5 of 6 in the photography reading order. See all 6
Read nextThe Photograph as Contemporary ArtCharlotte CottonEnd with Cotton's map of photography as contemporary art, sorted into eight approaches you can name when you brief a photographer.Read before thisOn Photography
Opens a search on AbeBooks, a network of independent and antiquarian sellers, which is where a good part of this shelf has to be found, because it is out of print.
Read next
Chosen because they argue with this one, not because a machine noticed they share a category.
Also on the·photography shelf