tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8468699.post963743480497922398..comments2017-08-04T09:05:49.536-04:00Comments on "...it just says 'M'...": The Last Part of Camera LucidaNicholas Grecohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12159802575350677365noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8468699.post-77357447707799798322012-10-26T03:41:06.918-04:002012-10-26T03:41:06.918-04:00Section 45: Barthes divides ‘being’ and ‘existence...Section 45: Barthes divides ‘being’ and ‘existence’ (ontology versus metaphysics?) – existence is merely a corollary of reality, but being possesses essence. A photograph can authenticate being, but yields no verifiable essence, just a strong intuition. Barthes calls the intuited expression we read into a photograph its ‘air.’ Only through this air can we sense the true essence of a subject, beyond its likeness and identity. Inevitably, it takes on a moral dimension: we sense an aura that complements the being. Most interestly, Barthes seems to believe that (contra texts) a photograph cannot be deconstructed meaningfully because a photograph is truth and any attempt to dissect and separate it results in a complete unraveling. <br /><br />Section 46: Barthes wonders about how an air can communicate something accurate when the subject may have had no intention of transmitting such an atmosphere. He concludes that, once again, essence is at the heart of the matter: the air is a result of an internal attribute: ‘retained within the self’ (113). Meanwhile, I have yet to be cited by any of my professors in a scholarly publication.<br /><br />Section 47: Barthes says it best: “The Photograph then becomes a bizarre medium, a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time . . . (on the one hand “it is not there,” on the other “but it has indeed been”) (115). If pity and madness are the heart of Photography, it seems that pathos is an essential characteristic of Photographs. In Barthes’ beloved Latin, I think his sentiments would best be described as the ‘Lacrimae rerum’ of Virgil: tears for things that have passed. I think Roland may also have enjoyed the Japanese idea of mono no aware – sadness for the transience of things. I think under the form of pathos we can recognize Barthes’ recurring claim that photography is all about death – every moment portrayed is dead by the time we look upon it, and eventually all the beings in it will pass, leaving the viewer alone with a photograph so alive in its representation of the dead. It invites us to experience this madness firsthand: “In each of them, inescapably, I passed beyond the unreality of the thing represented, I entered crazily into the spectacle, into the image, taking into my arms what is dead, what is going to die” (116-117). <br /><br />Section 48: Barthes claims no art is mad. I think he simply didn’t live long enough. In any case, he is correct that society has attempted to tame art by casting it as “simply an illusion” (high art) or by cheapening it through commercialization and/or replication (kitsch). A Marxist reading of “The Photograph crushes all other images by its tyranny:” photography has become a tool to exploit the masses. The human element has been stripped from most of photography. Barthes does not give much hope that there is a middle way between the mad and the tame: “Such are the two ways of the Photgraph. The choice is mine: to subject its spectacle to the civilized code of perfect illusions, or to confront in it the wakening of intractable reality” (119). I am not sure how to receive this final section, but I know that I want to discover an alternative to madness and illusion – the truth is out there. <br /><br />If I use Latin to invent terms and use parentheses generously, perhaps I shall find it. <br />Phil Wiebehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11255460683986550805noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8468699.post-90556160446444864042012-10-25T03:02:06.268-04:002012-10-25T03:02:06.268-04:00Sections 45-48 will be posted this (25th) evening....Sections 45-48 will be posted this (25th) evening.Phil Wiebehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11255460683986550805noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8468699.post-21897097992765498162012-10-25T03:01:02.872-04:002012-10-25T03:01:02.872-04:00Section 41: The scrutiny of a photograph is an act...Section 41: The scrutiny of a photograph is an action undertaken in good faith even against the recognition of futility: can we know anything more about the represented than what we see? The Photograph captures our drive to find truth and suspends it, rendering it impervious to reason and allowing it to be guided only by desire. A prized line: “Such is the Photograph: it cannot say what it lets us see” (100). <br /><br />Section 42: Photographs are representations of perceived ‘likenesses’ to imagined ‘identities.’ Portraits are correct or false based on their adherence to cultural expectations. Barthes’ personal analysis is especially potent: “All I look like is other photographs of myself, and this to infinity: no one is ever anything but the copy a copy, real or mental . . . ultimately a photograph looks like anyone except the person it represents” (102). <br /><br />Section 43: Photographs can carry the sense of the over-real – a realization of something never noticed in actuality (Barthes uses family resemblances as an example). This reminds me of the slogan of the Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner: “More human than human.” <br /><br />Section 44: Barthes’ quote from Blanchot posits the photograph as a continual paradox; Barthes seems certain that a photograph provides undeniable information yet offers up no knowledge. This seems in contradiction to his previous insight, but perhaps his observations can be divided between ‘personal, subjective’ and ‘historical, matter-of-fact subjects’ that have little bearing on wisdom. When Barthes says he cannot interpret or even saying anything about a photograph I think he is selling himself short. <br />Phil Wiebehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11255460683986550805noreply@blogger.com