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A review by casparb
Camera Lucida: Vintage Design Edition by Roland Barthes
4.0
Barthes managed to make an analysis of the philosophy of Photography incredibly tender.
I do love Barthes as a theorist - he's always self-aware enough to make things readable, one has a sense all the while that he writes on literature, or in this case, photography, because he loves it, not because he has IDEAS about it. (he does have clever ideas but one doesn't understand that to be why he writes).
His reflections on photography (an art? a science? neither? that is for the best) wind their way into a dissection of memory: his thoughts become autobiographical, as he attempts to recall his mother from amongst the pictures he has of her. This section is so delicate - I think much of the emotion here is informed by the knowledge that Barthes died the same week he finished this book, so when he ruminates upon his own death, photographs of himself, there's a deeply bittersweet sense that he knew (somehow) that it would be soon.
I suppose it's just not often one comes across a literary theorist that thinks of the heart.
I do love Barthes as a theorist - he's always self-aware enough to make things readable, one has a sense all the while that he writes on literature, or in this case, photography, because he loves it, not because he has IDEAS about it. (he does have clever ideas but one doesn't understand that to be why he writes).
His reflections on photography (an art? a science? neither? that is for the best) wind their way into a dissection of memory: his thoughts become autobiographical, as he attempts to recall his mother from amongst the pictures he has of her. This section is so delicate - I think much of the emotion here is informed by the knowledge that Barthes died the same week he finished this book, so when he ruminates upon his own death, photographs of himself, there's a deeply bittersweet sense that he knew (somehow) that it would be soon.
I suppose it's just not often one comes across a literary theorist that thinks of the heart.