A review by mirivii
Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

informative medium-paced

3.0

This was an interesting read. Some paragraphs were better than others, overall felt that the author kept on repurposing the same affirmations in a different order. At times repetitive, but worth going through for the concepts expressed. A lot of quotes from Sartre, and definitely a language that wouldn't fly in today's publishing world. I really loved the cursive font choice of this edition.

Wish I could have read it before writing my thesis on the beautification of violence in modern photojournalism, as it would have given me a lot of ideas. 

Ultimately Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks. 

But do we 'see' in dreams, or do we 'know'? I dream about her, I do not dream her.

What characterizes the so-called advanced societies is that they today consume images and no longer (...) beliefs; that they are therefore more liberal, less fantastical, but also more "false" - something we translate, in ordinary consciousness, by the avowal of an impression of nauseated boredom, as if the universalized image were producing a world that is without difference (...)