Reflections on Photography

The photograph is never anything but an antiphon of "Look," "See," "Here it is." It points a finger at a certain vis-a-vis and cannot escape this pure deictic language (Barthes, 1981).

For Barthes, photographs are deictic (Barthes, 1981), meaning they are defined by context. Unlike other media, photographs are meaningless without a subject. One way of engaging with photographs is to ignore their form and focus purely on their content. A photograph is a facsimile of reality; it is the most accurate in its faithful representation and gives the best illusion of reality.

Photographs also have a “that-has-been” quality that links them to memory and the history of the subject captured. A photograph is a perfect still of time. Barthes (1981) states, "The noise of time is not sad: I love the bells, clocks, watches – and I recall that at first, photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing.”

In my practice, I have realized that these qualities can be translated into drawing. In the style of photorealism, with the goal of creating images that resemble photographs, the effect is the same as an actual photograph, provided that I can maintain the suspension of disbelief. Meticulous attention to detail and precision is practiced. A photorealistic drawing also connotes an image that belongs to the past, similar to an old photograph.

Barthes also introduced the concept of studium and punctum which tackles how viewers read a photograph. Studium is feature of an image that presents the photographer's myth. It is mediated by cultural understanding. 

Wessing, K. (1979) Nicaragua [Photograph]. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography.

In his example photo, Nicaragua by Wessing, we see military conflict in a war stricken place. We can see this with the signs of wretched uniformed soldiers and ruined streets. The studium teaches us that the image is a war photo (Barthes, 1981).

Punctum is the detail within the photograph that punctures or cuts right through our emotions and arrests our attention. In the same photo, that would be the nuns. The church was implanted in Latin American countries, and the nuns (not typical for a war photo) there are allowed to circulate the war area as nurses. Studium and punctum highlights juxtaposition. Punctum is an accent that gives personal meaning (Barthes, 1981). It breaks the myth, because of its contradictory nature. 

In my creative practice, I explored if punctum can be planted. Applying this concept in drawing, I could add elements on a composition while keeping it photorealistic. This way I could keep the illusion of reality while revising the image. This would change the narrative to the direction that I want.

Reference:

Barthes, R. (1981). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Hill and Wang.