Anne Popiel

Roland Barthes�s Camera Lucida: Fried and Elkins on the punctum

In “Barthes’s Punctum,” Michael Fried suggests that the most common interpretation of the punctum by other readers of Camera Lucida is insufficient to grasp the full consequences of Barthes’s thought. Fried decides that most definitions of the punctum have focused simply on the viewer’s personal engagement with an image. While correct, he finds that this emphasis does not take into account an important aspect Barthes included in his personal science of the punctum. In CL Section 20 he observes that the detail of the photograph which strikes him can only be the punctum if it has not been intended as such by the photographer. This claim of Barthes Fried situates in what he calls the antitheatrical ideal beginning with Diderot in the 18^th century, in which the subjects of the artwork appear not to be aware of or to be placed there for the viewer. Further, time – or death which is brought out through time – functions as the punctum for Barthes for the very reason that no one involved in the taking of the photograph can be aware of their future ‘pastness’ at the time of exposure. Thus, the newer phenomenon of digitalization in photography Fried associates with the “implication that the contents of the photograph have been put there by its maker,” thereby removing any possibility for an experience of the punctum in a digital photograph.

James Elkins in the next issue of Critical Inquiry commends Fried’s restriction on the future usage of the punctum in discourse, affirming Fried’s view of the importance for the punctum of what goes against the photographer’s intention. However, Elkins desires to move beyond the constraints of what he calls vernacular photography (personally engaging photos of people, usually) to find “a difference between whatever photography is and vernacular photography in particular.” One example for Elkins is the marks and scratches in the background of Lewis Payne’s portrait, and another is digital photography in general, stating that nothing in the digital image threatens the punctum or the image’s antitheatricality. He specifically discusses a number of electron microscope technologies, which form digital images of atoms with hardly any photographer manipulation, and without even using light at all. Instead, images of atomic structures are formed using mathematical probability functions, or the mathematical difference between the sound wave vibration frequencies of the atom and the tip of the scanner probe.

Do such theories as Barthes’s and Fried’s regarding the structure of photographic images include much more than vernacular photography? Does the possibility of the punctum disappear in digital photography? Is such writing about photography, that of personal engagement with memories, about photography at all? How, then, to write about it?

Fried, Michael. “Barthes’s Punctum.” Critical Inquiry. Chicago: Spring 2005. Vol. 31, Iss. 3. p. 539-74.

Elkins, James. “Critical Response: What Do We Want Photography to Be? A Response to Michael Fried.” Critical Inquiry. Chicago: Summer 2005. Vol. 31, Iss. 4. p. 938-56.