Christine McCrory
Fall 2007
The Prosthetic Eye
Thought Paper on Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
Both Nicholas Huckle and Margaret Olin make use of Barthes’ text to ponder the relationship with other people implicated in the medium of photography, but they do so using very different theoretical approaches. Huckle contrasts BarthesÂ’ discussion of photography with HeideggerÂ’s discussion of a painting by Van Gogh in The Origin of the Work of Art, arguing that a comparison of the two demonstrates “a clear difference in the respective understandings of human essence.” (Huckle 275) Huckle argues that for Heidegger there is a fundamentally social aspect to being, in that we recognize the beings and things around us as having their own existence. This existence does not have to be specific or assigned specific attributes, but the recognition of the Dasein of others is essential for the concept of existence as such. It is in this context that Huckle discusses Van GoghÂ’s painting of shoes. The fact that Van GoghÂ’s painting is a painting separates the recognition of the shoes of a worker from the shoes of a specific worker who actually existed. “For the Van Gogh shoes, and here it is precisely this sense, in which the attributes of the Other are accidental but the presence essential, which is foregrounded through the fact that we lack all knowledge of a particular possessor of the shoes.” (Huckle 277) Thus, the fact that we see the shoes but they are not necessarily factual allows them to represent more closely a transcendent concept of Being than a photograph, with its requirement that a particular thing must at some point have been there, can do. According to Huckle, therefore, BarthesÂ’ preoccupation with the “that-has-been” of the photograph exposes him to the problem of a “dichotomy between human essence and factual existence at a particular historical moment.” (Huckle 279) Thus, the moment of “there-she-is” in BarthesÂ’ recognition of his mother in the Winter Garden Photograph is not recognition of human essence, but rather the cry of an isolated ego.
Questions: Is Barthes’ project really one of looking for the human essence as such, or just for the essence of the lost mother? Can the search for one individual essence be a window to the search for the human essence? Is there a way that photography can preserve the lack of specificity “required” for a transcendent way of thinking about Being?
Margaret Olin focuses on the moment of identification as a key moment in photography. She argues that several of Barthes’ descriptions of photographs in his text are inaccurate. Her two main examples are: (1) Barthes’ discussion of the braided gold necklace in James Van Der Zee’s Family Portrait, when in fact the woman in the portrait is wearing a string of pearls, and (2) the Winter Garden Photograph, which Olin argues does not actually exist. Rather, it is an imaginary alteration of the picture titled The Stock (Barthes 104) with the grandfather removed and a lush winter garden added. Olin uses these two “misidentifications” to re-evaluate Barthes’ theory of the punctum. As Barthes explains it, “A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).” (Barthes 27) The punctum disturbs the overall field of a photograph (the studium), and is usually a detail. Since Barthes’ text begins from the premise that something must be in front of the camera to be in the photograph, the punctum, however personal one’s reaction to it may be, must originate in the photograph. Olin argues rather that it is the nature of the punctum to come from the viewer, not the photograph. “The punctum is the detail that is not there, or that one wishes were not there.” (Olin 110) By misidentifying the photographs, Barthes makes the photographs he discusses more meaningful to him, more personal, creating a chain of “identificatory relationships” (Olin 114) that situate not just the people in the photographs, but also the identity of Barthes’ narrator. Olin concludes that the “power of the photograph may consequently lie not in the relation between the photograph and its subject but in the relation between the photograph and its beholder, or user.” (Olin 114-15)
Questions: Is Barthes’ project really only personal and self-referential? If so, does that undermine the legitimacy of that project for us as readers? Have we ignored the identificatory power of the viewer in our discussions, and if so, how does that change our view of photography?
Sources
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida.Â
Huckle, Nicholas. “On
Representation and Essence: Barthes and Heidegger.” The
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. (1985): 275-80.
Olin, Margaret. “Touching Photographs: Roland BarthesÂ’s ‘MistakenÂ’ Identification.”Â
Representations. 80 (2002): 99-118.