As others have mentioned in their blog posts, I found myself agreeing with a surprisingly large amount of Barthes’ points on photography, specifically in Part One of the book. However, the few points that I would like to focus on are found in Part Two, and they are points that I do not necessarily agree with one hundred percent. I get a feeling that Barthes – perhaps intentionally, perhaps unintentionally – suggests a way of seeing photography that is overwhelmingly negative at several different points in his examinations of the medium. On page 96, Barthes examines a portrait of Lewis Payne that was taken in his jail cell not long before he was hanged. Barthes explains that “the punctum is: he is going to die”, and that that he reads the photograph as simultaneously being what “will be” and what “has been” (96).
The essence, meaning, and implications of this photograph all revolve around one central concept: Time. The reason that the aura of this photograph – which I find to be extremely haunting and disturbing – is so very troubling is the fact that it problematizes the relationship between the past and the present to the point that the viewer is momentarily unsure whether or not the photographic subject exists in real-time. It is obviously unnerving to look into the intense, focused eyes of this young man and know that he was hanged not long after the photograph was taken. As the viewer stands in present-time looking into this man’s face – which has been put on display and perhaps even exploited, as it has inevitably become the object of voyeurism and intense scrutiny – he/she is staring into a window of a dark past. For a brief moment, the viewer may even forget that this man has been dead for an extended period of time, as his body is so clearly depicted in real-time before the viewer’s naked eye. Eventually, the viewer will come to realize that he/she is looking into what appears to be an uninviting, cold past, thus transcending the photograph to a ghost-like and powerful place.
Barthes best explains this by stating that he shudders “over a catastrophe which has already occurred.” He goes on to say that “whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.” I believe the catastrophe he is referring to is the aforementioned problematization of Time, which is embodied by the idea of looking into the face of someone the viewer knows to be deceased. But what does he mean that the catastrophe has already occurred? Is he simply referring to the fact that the person in the photograph is already dead? Or is the mere action of taking a photograph enough to already cause the catastrophe, as the subject is bound to die eventually? Barthes also argues that every photograph is this catastrophe, which makes me think that perhaps this “catastrophe” is much deeper and much more complicated than what I am defining it as…
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