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by Roland Barthes
translated by Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, 1981, $10.95, hardcover
A review by Elsa Dorfman
Originally published in The Journal of Photography in New England,
Volume 3 Number 3
Roland Barthes, who died in 1981, was an eminent French historian,
writer and philosopher, one of the chief formulators of semiology, the
study of forms by interpreting the societal role of signs and symbols.
La Chambre Claire, in its English translation, Camera Lucida,
was his last work. Barthes had written occasional pieces on photography
before be wrote Camera Lucida. The form of the book is 48 one-to-three
page numbered essays which lead almost architecturally from one to the
other. Titled in the table of contents, the essay sections carry no titles
in the work itself, probably to induce fluidity and a narrative sense.
Barthes was prompted to write this book when he was in mourning for
his mother, to whom he was devoted and with whom he lived. A major section
of the book is about his looking among family photographs for the best,
most telling picture of his mother. He was searching for the true HER among
all the snapshots of her long life that were available to him. Most people
have had this experience in their private lives. We have as well gone through
this process en masse as a culture following the death of public figures
who have touched us: John F. Kennedy, John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe. Recently,
on the one hundredth anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's birthday,
the media printed pictures that through the filter of 35 years seemed to
hold the charisma of the man. (Similarly, we look for the diabolical streak
in pictures of persons who turn out to be mass murderers: Ted Bundy, John
Wayne Gacy.) As photographers, many of us have in our archives portraits
of people who are now dead, some of whom may mean a great deal to us. I
can understand Barthes' ordeal and the pull of his mother's images. Last
year I printed a commemorative series of portraits of a poet friend, Charles
Olson, who died 11 years ago. In each of my images he was large and vigorous;
in one or two I could literally hear his voice. Going through my contact
prints, I was in a trance, a real time warp. More recently, in this past
month, actually while reading Barthes, I printed 24 images of my aunt Riv,
who is dying at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. They were all taken at
parties celebrating her 60th and 65th birthdays. In the images, she is
happy and vigorous, innocent of her future. Poring over images of the dead
is an active part of grief, of mourning, of dealing with the actuality
of death. This ritual didn't exist for anybody but the upper classes, obviously,
before photography was invented; 1839 must be a milestone in the history
of mourning rites and thanatology.
It seems inevitable to me that in going over old pictures of his mother,
Barthes would be overwhelmed with the connections between the Images, Time
and Death. (It is a totally human conclusion.) The reality of the photos
is palpable, but the reality of Death is the ultimate Concrete. It is inevitable
that Barthes would be struck by what Time and the Instant mean in an image.
How the image fights Change (the ultimate Change being Death.) It is natural,
considering the genesis of his ideas, that Barthes would decide that the
genius of photography was the specificity of the subject of the image,
that the subject "really was there". And that he would conclude that Death
was the logical implication of every image.
Barthes went through all the pictures of his mother - from the most
recent ones to ones of her childhood. The one he settled on and doesn't
reproduce (assuring us it would be uninteresting) is from her childhood.
He describes it thus:
My mother was five at the time (1898), her brother was seven.
He was leaning against the bridge railing...she, shorter than he, was standing
a little back, facing the camera...she was holding one finger in the other
hand as children often do, in an awkward gesture. The brother and sister
had posed, side by side, alone, under the palms of the Winter Garden...I
studied the little girl and at last rediscovered my mother.
What is so special about the Winter Garden Photograph, as Barthes calls
this essential portrait? What can be extrapolated from his search about
the nature of portraits which work? Or about how they work? Barthes says
that what makes the Winter Garden Photograph so great is that his mother
let herself be photographed. She lent herself to the photographer. She
placed herself in front of the lens with discretion. He sees this photograph
as a new moment. It has the splendor of her truth, although it doesn't
look "like" her (being of a child Barthes never knew). Barthes sees the
Winter Garden Photograph of his mother as perpetuating Love. He is comforted
by its actuality - the fact it literally emanated from his mother. She
did not struggle with her image. She was neither showing nor hiding herself.
There is an assertion of gentleness, he writes.
Barthes' mother was, in fact, the perfect portrait subject. How many
of us have had to struggle with the subject who fights us subtly as we
try to take his/her portrait. In fact, the art of the portrait photographer
may be to induce in his/her subjects the state of gentleness and "thereness"
that Barthes describes in his mother. The "thereness" in a person's character
transcends Death. We recognize the person's character immediately. An image
that comes to mind is a portrait of John Lennon that Annie Leibowitz took
on the last afternoon of his life. It is a straight-on head-and-shoulders
image; Lennon is wearing a dark sweater. (Rolling Stone published
the image on the anniversary of Lennon's death.) Lennon was a natural subject
for the camera. He was always there. Some people just look like
there is nobody home and it is very hard to get a good portrait of them.
What one gets is a portrait of vacancy. (To help induce "Thereness" in
a subject, I explain to him/her what I find interesting about him/her.
Many people have no idea what makes them interesting to other people. "It's
your curly hair. It's your mink coat. It's your kind face. It's your bravery.")
Barthes sees Death implicit in each photograph. He is struck by how
the photograph moves you back through time. How you always have the past
with you. Each photo documents a 1/60, 1/ 125 of a second that existed.
Death is the final moment of a life and the last possible photograph. At
the same time, Barthes sees the photograph as a kind of resurrection. It
continues after the person is gone. It has a life of its own, in scrapbooks,
on walls, in cardboard boxes, as long as the paper exists. Barthes likes
the fact that what he sees has existed in front of the lens. The past is
as certain as the present. He can assure himself of his mother and know
that his experience with her was real. The Winter Garden image becomes
a magic relic, as though it is part of his mother.
It is interesting that Barthes settled on the Winter Garden Photograph
as the Total Portrait. Many photographers, beginning with Stieglitz, think
that the most telling portrait is an extended series which is cumulative
in its effect. Barthes, in Camera Lucida, never raises the possibility
that several images could yield the "true" portrait. Partly, it may be
because Barthes was searching in grief and love for one image in which
to find his mother's spirit. When I go over my contact prints of people
I have photographed off and on for 15 years, some portraits nail my friends
more than others do. But the cumulative effect is at least as powerful
as is the effect of any one image. The change over Time is eerie and it
seems to me, at those times particularly, that photography is about change.
I am struck by the fragility of the status quo; we don't know what is waiting
for us around the corner. (I have many pictures of happy couples now divorced
that I would publish as a series dedicated to life's uncertainty if it
weren't for the lawsuits it would provoke.) Wendy MacNeil's longitudinal
composite portraits are a good example of the power of cumulative imagery.
It's interesting, too, that Barthes never talks about the effects of
different kinds of cameras on the images produced. Surely, all the pictures
of Barthes' mother that he reviewed before settling on the Winter Garden
Photograph weren't in the same format.
I find format a decisive factor in the kind of portrait I take and get.
The 35mm camera is quick, casual, familiar. It is a mask in front of my
face, but I am very accessible. The technology is easy and it adapts to
the situation. The square is a much harder form to compose within. I hardly
ever take a full figure with it since I don't know what to do with the
leftover space (usually on the sides). It is great for people on chairs,
or half the figure, or just the face. (You can tell Diane Arbus and Lisette
Model are no ordinary photographers by how they use the square.) The Polaroid
20 x 24 on the other hand, is stimulating because of the heroic scale and
the color. (Barthes never mentions scale as affecting an image's impact.
Perhaps all the images of his mother in the cartons were small, ordered
for the family album.) The 20 x 24 isn't a mask for the photographer. It
is a bonafide accomplice. The photography session becomes theater. And
since the subject sees and can react to each shot, the session is collaborative
and builds upon itself. The 20 x 24 is a very stimulating format for me.
It demands a certain control, a sense of composition, and a sense of the
subject's formalism and body. In the studio, without a lot of props, I
have to induce the "thereness" in my subjects. (It is very important to
pick interesting people and to compose carefully.) The 20 x 24, with no
negative and no darkroom work, is a direct medium and produces a startling
lifelike photographic rendition. The image is a life mask.
Aside from what seems to be an obsession with the photograph as the
shadow of the frozen moment and time/reality/death/portraiture, Barthes
makes many observations on photography which are on their way to becoming
part of the vocabulary, especially studium and punctum. The
studium is the spectator's attraction, because of cultural background,
interest, curiosity, to an image. Barthes describes "unary" photographs
(e.g., news photographs, war photographs, sociological photographs) as
providing for the spectator of a lot of studium. The pornographic photograph
which is completely constituted by one thing (genitalia) is another example
of a photograph with a lot of studium. The example of studium Barthes chooses
to reproduce is an image titled "Mayday" by William Klein. It is a picture
with a lot of cultural information. We can find other examples in W. Eugene
Smith, Susan Meiselas, or Lee Lockwood.
The punctum, on the other hand, is the detail that catches the eye,
jogs the memory, arouses tenderness. The punctum has the power of expansion,
while remaining a detail. It is an attribute of the scene. It occurs in
the field of the photographed thing like a supplement that is inevitable
and delightful. Barthes discusses the punctum in (and reprints) photographs
by Van der Zee, Klein, Kertesz, Hine, and Mapplethorpe (whose work he loves).
Barthes says that it is the punctum that lets the pornographic image
rise to the erotic. It is the detail that takes the edge off pornography's
literalness. I think Barthes is right here. For two and a half years, I
worked closely with James Donald (formerly of Cambridge, now of Baltimore).
Donald concentrates on nude homosexual imagery. Once I got used to the
anatomical differences and the sexual motifs, the nakedness and the explicitness
were boring to me. It wasn't until Donald himself got tired of being explicit
and began to layer his images with details and suggestions that they became
erotic and tender. (He also became humorous and has a whole series of nude
male studies posed in front of and within venerable Harvard landmarks.)
Barthes has written a marvelous description of the discomforts of the
Subject/Target. Subjects who feel as uncomfortable as Barthes does in front
of a camera drive me crazy. "If I could be painted (by Titan) or drawn
(by Clouet)...If only I could come out on paper as a classical canvas,
endowed with a notable expression - thoughtful, intelligent, etc." He continues
to lament that he hadn't been photographed by Nadar or Avedon. (It is hard
to believe that Avedon, who pursues cultural giants, missed photographing
Barthes.) "I don't know how to work upon my skin from within," he complains.
Nothing makes a subject like Barthes happy with his image. Color. Black
and white. Inside. Outside. Casual. Formal. Close up. Far away. Some people's
desire to be mythic keeps them perpetually dissatisfied and kills any possibility
of a mythic persona they may have within them appearing. One poet I photographed
wrote that if I published my mournful portraits of her, no one would buy
her books.
I have a strategy for such crankiness. During the second, remedial session,
I use Polaroid 665 positive/negative film and shoot until the subject is
happy. That forces the subject to work at his/her image. The message of
the 665 film to my subjects is "You are boss. You can check every image.
We will go on until you are satisfied or exhausted. You are in control."
The frontispiece of Camera Lucida is a Polaroid color (predominantly
blue) image of a bed and a blowing curtain by Daniel Boudinet. Neither
the image nor Boudinet is mentioned anywhere in the text. In fact, Barthes
goes out of his way to mention Polaroid materials are only effective in
the hands of a great photographer. He makes a point of saying color is
an artifice, a cosmetic. It is a coating applied to the original truth
of a black-&-white photograph. Why did Barthes or his editor choose
that untitled image as the frontispiece of his book? Was it playfulness?
Was it to suggest that no theory is the whole story? Was it to accentuate
the effectiveness of portraits? Was it to provide a counterpoint to his
insights? I welcome ideas from others as pedantically inclined as I am.
Basically, Barthes doesn't think the photographer does much. He thinks
the key to the successful portrait lies unconsciously with the subject
(his/her aura) and with Time. He is unaware that a good portrait requires
work on the part of the photographer and the subject. He doesn't realize
that sometimes the magic is due to the photographer and sometimes it is
due to the subject (more often to both).
I find it hard to believe that Barthes doesn't realize what goes into
the skill of someone like Richard Avedon. Perhaps Barthes is feigning naiveté.
Avedon, who during the one time I watched him work, photographing Allen
Ginsberg and his family, was totally controlling and in control. He controlled
where each toe of each of the twelve relatives was lined up on a predetermined
chalk line. He determined each person's posture. He worked from sketches
drawn before the session which were based on each person's height and size.
Nothing was left to chance. He took Polaroids to check the lighting and
the arrangement of subjects.
Barthes reproduces "William Casby, born a slave, 1963" and "A. Philip
Randolph (The Family) 1976," by Avedon, and "Notary," by Sander. Casby
and the Notary, Barthes says, are examples of the Photograph of the Mask
- or what makes a face into the product of society and of its history.
That's another way of saying "a great subject, a great face." Barthes never
acknowledges that part of the genius of Avedon and Sander is in how they
selected their subjects. They picked people who epitomized that period
and the stratum of society they found of particular interest. Finding a
good subject, someone who can respond to the camera with the gentleness
and thereness that Barthes' mother had for the photographer of the Winter
Garden Photograph takes skill and luck. Elaine Mayes did a marvelous series
of portraits of young people who lived in the Haight-Ashbury district in
the sixties. These images epitomize that time and will become increasingly
valuable to us as the sixties recede in memory. The MFA owns at least one
of these images and the series was reproduced in Aperture. They
are worth looking up as a good illustration of a subject that encapsulates
their time in history.
Barthes thinks that all the attributes that make these three images
great existed in Casby, Randolph and the Notary themselves and were simply
captured by the camera. It doesn't occur to him that they could possibly
be created or elicited by Avedon or Sander. Barthes thinks it is all the
aura, the air of the person, his/her look; it is what IS that makes a good
photograph. (Barthes never considers light. He never considers how light
affects Avedon's or Sander's images, how they might use light to reveal
and accentuate character or charisma.)
Finally, in conclusion, Barthes says that generally in photography,
it is the amateur who is closer to the spirit and mastery of the profession
than the professional. I'm bemused (and not the least threatened) by this
slight of my life's work, since, though the Winter Garden Photograph was
taken by an amateur, Barthes' list of admired photographers is headed by
Nadar, Sander, Avedon, and Kertesz. (For some reason, Barthes never mentions
Arbus, whose work I think he would have loved.) Barthes may feel the amateur
is closer to the inimitable feature (his word is noeme) of photography,
which is the that-has-been quality of the image, because the amateur is
motivated by "here-we-are-let's-remember-this" which becomes, the moment
the shutter closes, that-has-been. The professionals start from a different
place.
elsad@theworld.com
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