NUMBER: 65TITLE: Camera Lucida
AUTHOR: Roland Barthes
STARTED: September 26, 2005
FINISHED: September 26, 2005
PAGES: 119
GENRE: Non-Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852.
SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] This personal, wide-ranging, and contemplative volume--and the last book Barthes published--finds the author applying his influential perceptiveness and associative insight to the subject of photography.
REASON FOR READING: Assigned in MDIA 499: Senior Seminar.
THOUGHTS: The content of this book could have been summed up like this: Photography strikes everyone differently. It's essence is never the same.
That's all it needed. I thought that Barthes made some good points about how photography strikes everyone differently and is vehicle to the past, beyond that, it bored me. We hashed out the text for 2 and a half hours in class and I left feeling no different than when I went in. Essentially, I think Barthes was writing a dialog for himself. He wanted to know if photography could be defined and this is what resulted. It was not the worst book for class that I've read, but I don't think it was anywhere near the best.
The one passage I enjoyed the most: "In this glum desert, suddenly a specific photograph reaches me; it animates me, and I animate it. So that is how I must name the attraction which makes it exist: an animation. The photograph itself is in now way animated (I do not believe in "lifelike" photographs), but it animates me: this is what creates every adventure."
I love perusing photographs where ever I find them. I could actually agree and understand Barthes when he made this point.
MISCELLANEOUS: At least it was short.
KEEP/SHARE/CRINGE(?): Getting sold back at the end of the semester.
RATING: 4/10 [An "okay" book, but I don't recommend it]
CR: Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann
RN: A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
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