624308

research-article2016

VCJ0010.1177/1470357215624308Visual CommunicationButchart

visual communication
A rticl e

The communicology of Roland Barthes

Camera Lucida: reflections on the
signbody experience of visual
communication

G ar n e t C B u tc h art
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

A bstract

This article contributes both to the conversation about visual communication

opened by Roland Barthes classic book, Camera Lucida: Reflections on
Photography and current research in communicology (semiotic phenomenology). The article offers an interpretation (third step) to the reduction
(second step) of the description (first step) of Barthes semiotic phenomenology of communication. Attention is paid to time consciousness, the
concept of the punctum, and the interplay between presence and absence
opened by it. The interpretation draws on Jean Luc Nancys philosophy of
visual images in order to expand the discussion of three emergent themes
in Camera Lucida: the unseen, exposure, and death. Discussion of these
themes from a communicology perspective deepens our understanding of
visual communication as a signbody experience.
K e y w ords

Barthes communication communicology photography semiotics

Consider a photograph. What a viewer sees when gazing upon it is a visual

image rather than its material support. The support, whether light sensitive
paper or glass and pixel, is relatively invisible underneath the image depicted.
And, just as viewers typically look past the material support, so too do we
commonly fail to reflect upon the experience of its viewing. In order to see
what a photograph is relative to the image held to vision by its support and
the experience of its viewing, perspective must shift. Analysis of the conscious
experience of such a shift in perspective is what lies at the heart of Roland
Barthes classic book, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography.
Visual Communication 2016
Vol. 15(2) 199219
The Author(s) 2016
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DOI 10.1177/1470357215624308

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Recall the first two phases of that elegant study. First, Barthes describes
the primary conditions of a photograph: a camera operators viewpoint (the
perspective a viewer adopts when looking at a photo), and the images material support (its physical channel). However, Barthes argues that neither
of these conditions offers much insight into understanding what he calls
Photographys essence (Barthes, 1981: 20).1 The description must be refined.
So, second, Barthes performs a reduction of his description, ruling out both
the material support of the image and the operators perspective as unnecessary to understanding what is essential about Photography. The reduction
(a peeling away of common perspectives brought to the study of photography) uncovers something new, namely, a double occlusion: both the operators perspective and medium are masked by the sheer visibility of the image.
Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, Barthes says, a photograph is always invisible: it is not it that we see (p. 6).
To be sure, this insight into photography is already banal. Obviously, as
viewers, we suspend what is understood intuitively about the material support
and perspective that govern the visibility of photographic images: typically we
do not mistake a photograph for its content, as if it really were a piece of fruit,
say, or the flesh of another before us. That said, however, one of the major
successes of Camera Lucida is its calling attention to our natural (that is, nonreflective) disposition towards the appearance of visual images, whether photographic (still) and/or cinematic (moving). Calling viewers back from our
blindness to how we look, Barthes reduction of his description of Photography
shows how some photographs can be seen to offer expression to phenomena of
which we may be aware but that nevertheless remain beyond our immediate,
conscious perception.
Originally published in French in 1980 and translated into English in
1981, Camera Lucida today remains highly influential of scholarship across
the media arts. Although we usually read Barthes as a major figure in the 20th
century structuralist semiotics enterprise, Camera Lucida is in fact a rigorous
work of phenomenology.2 Contrary to the majority of secondary literature that
builds upon it, Barthes object of analysis in Camera Lucida is not Photography
and photographic technique, and not the meanings of photographic images;
rather, his primary object of analysis is the conscious experience of semiosis.3
The essential insight offered by Camera Lucida is this: the so-called referent
of any photograph is not a past object, but an implied viewer expected to see
it in the future. For that reason, I argue that Camera Lucida can be read as a
semiotic phenomenology of visual communication as a signbody experience.
To support this thesis, my discussion draws in part from communicology, a tradition of research in the field of Communication that brings together
the seemingly disparate tradition of semiotics and phenomenology. In communicology, semiotics is the use of signs to understand the logic, or codes, of
a culture; phenomenology is used as a qualitative methodology to describe the
human experience of those codes.4 Brought together, semiotic phenomenology

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of communication asks a primary question: What role do signs play in how we

experience, reproduce, and contest the logic that organizes a culture?5 Crucial
to my discussion is the emphasis placed by communicology on human communication as a reversible relation, which means not only that self-expression
is related to other-perceptions, but also, as Lanigan (1997: 381) explains, that
expression and perception stand for one another in some capacity.6 In the
present article, I demonstrate how the semiotic principle of reversibility of
human communication applies to the phenomenology of expression and perception in photography.
Although the majority of scholarship devoted to Barthes work on
photography overlooks visual communication as a reversible relation,7 my
goal is not to marshal a case for rereading Camera Lucida against the grain
of research inspired by its rich and generative insights into visual media.
Instead, my goal is to offer a discussion of key themes that are emergent in
Barthes semiotic phenomenology of the experience of viewing photographs.
Specifically, the discussion to follow is a third step added to the first and second steps of Barthes procedure of semiotic phenomenology.
Allow me to summarize this procedure. The first step in semiotic
phenomenology involves description of given phenomena. Description thematises a perception. Part I of Camera Lucida (roughly, pp. 360) is Barthes
description of his perception of Photography as a sign-system. Readers
familiar with the book will recall Barthes careful discussion of studium and
punctum, two key concepts, which I discuss at length below, that are at the
centre of his discussion. The second step in semiotic phenomenology is a
reduction or refinement of the initial description. Reduction is a process of
identifying cases (inclusion and exclusion of examples) that are essential for
understanding the phenomena under investigation (for Barthes, the experience of Photography as a sign-system), as well as refining key terms from
the vocabulary of the description. Readers familiar with Part II of Camera
Lucida (roughly, pp. 63119) will recall Barthes reduction of his description
of the punctum as a key signifier. I discuss this aspect of his analysis later.
Finally, the third step in a semiotic phenomenological analysis is interpretation of the necessary and sufficient conditions of the problematic under
investigation, and the broader intellectual implications of judging it so. The
objective of the third step, a hermeneutic step, is to offer a new (or different)
perception of the major problematic, thus broadening the horizon of how it
may be understood.
The present article is my interpretation (a third step, therefore a judgment) of what I consider to be the philosophical problematic entered into by
Camera Lucida: namely, presence, absence and the experience of time, what I
call time consciousness, in photographic viewing. I discuss three main themes
that arise from the reduction (step two) of Barthes description (step one)
of his experience of Photography. These interrelated themes are as follows:
unseen, exposure and death. Barthes does not talk directly about all of these

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themes, nor does he offer a completed, third step in his analysis. I do. That is
the original contribution of the present article.
My discussion unfolds not only by way of a close reading of Camera
Lucida from the perspective of communicology, but also by integrating the
philosophy of Jean Luc Nancy, whose relevance to inquiry in Communication
I have explained in detail elsewhere (Butchart, 2014, 2015). For the purposes
of the present discussion it is sufficient to identify the two major benefits
of synthesizing Nancy, Barthes and communicology as: (1) depth added to
scholarship on Camera Lucida; and (2) expansion of communicology understanding of visual communication as a signbody experience (see Lanigan,
1972: 169174, 1997; Sobchak, 1992, 2004).
It is important to note at the outset that the discussion to follow shares
a kinship with its subject the experience of communication as a dynamic
process that may be attended to reflectively but cannot simply be made static
(or captured, like a snapshot). The discussion unfolds by way of reflection
on reflections. To be sure, it does not mimic Camera Lucida. The discussion
complements the look and sense of that text by expanding the philosophical
insights it offers into the human experience of visual communication.
1. I begin with Barthes celebrated concept of the punctum, which he offers
in aid of analysis of empirical phenomena the experience of visual communication, which, like the experience of auditory communication, can be
difficult to put into words. Readers familiar with Camera Lucida recognise
that Barthes definition of punctum evolves over the course of his description
(Part I) and reduction of the description (Part II), but what remains central to
it (why it is essential to his semiotic phenomenology) is the embodied effect of
communication the concept is employed to articulate. As Godysdotter (2013:
141) summarises Barthes approach in Camera Lucida: The experience that
cannot be described in language is circumvented by creating a new model
for communication that relies on texture, presence, and proximity a haptic
language of the visual.
Punctum is Latin for point. Barthes uses the term to name the effect
(perception) of a visual detail contained within certain photographs, a shiny
point that sways before your eyes and makes your head swim (Barthes, 1981:
18). The punctum is a sting, speck, cut, little hole (p. 19). It pricks me, Barthes
says, but also bruises me (p. 27).8 Barthes contrasts punctum with another
term, studium, which is Latin for gathering (Heideggers lesen). Studium
photographs are a gathering together of perspectives, a group or category of
photographs, such as war photography or portraits of daily life, that offer a
field of study by virtue of the information about the past presented by them.
Although studium photographs may have passing interest (I glance through
them, Barthes, 1981: 41 says), they are not striking, penetrating, or lasting, as
are photographs that exhibit a punctum. Crucial to understanding Barthes
semiotic phenomenology is that punctum does not guarantee a relation of

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adequation between a photo that contains it and the experience of its viewing.
Unlike studium, punctum is personal: not everyone will feel its piercing effect.
As Barthes (1981: 43) says to give examples of punctum is to give myself up
(emphasis in original).
Now, rather than rehearse debates waged over the meaning and possible utility of the punctum (see Burgin, 1997; Derrida, 2001; Elkins, 2005;
Fried, 2005), I want to set the course of my discussion by suggesting that photographs that strike Barthes are, in essence, in excess of the punctum. Those
photographs give too much more than can be received both by the viewer
and by the concept (punctum) that helps ground a phenomenology of their
fascinating power. The concept of the punctum is thematic to philosophical
study of visibility, hence its longstanding impact on media arts scholarship: it
not only helps Barthes to articulate what, for him, had been unforeseen in his
experience of photographic viewing, but also, by way of reducing his initial
description, the unseen of his experience may also be released for others to see.
To explain how this is so, I turn now to discuss the unseen as the first theme
of Camera Lucida.
Unseen does not mean impossible. The unseen is not separate from the
visible field but is encrusted in its joints (Merleau-Ponty, 1969: 114). Consider
examples of the punctum that Barthes identifies in Part I of Camera Lucida:
strapped pumps worn by an African woman (Barthes, 1981: 44); crossed arms
of a young sailor (p. 52); the kilted groom holding the bridle of a horse (p. 57);
the slightly repellant substance (p. 45) of Warhols fingernails (see Figure 1);
bad teeth of a boy in the street (p. 46); the finger bandage on a dwarf girls
hand (p. 51). Barthes discussion of these signifying details is less an attempt to
master the appearance of what most viewers would probably overlook than it
is an effort to stretch and widen the points at which the unseen experience of a
photographic image might spring forth, exceeding the perspective of a camera
operator, the material support of the image, and a viewers gaze.9
To be sure, if the unseen is there (sensible, at least for Barthes) in photographs from which he picks out signifying details that, to others, may appear
insignificant, then the pages he devotes to its description are not intended to
turn it into a spectacle for all viewers to set upon. The punctum is not offered
as an object to be found through surgical, media-textual analysis: Go find the
punctum! Explain how it brings you to tears! Instead, as an essential concept in
the vocabulary of Barthes semiotic phenomenology, punctum is intended to
do the philosophical work of inviting viewers into a position to reflect upon
what they may not have expected to see. Punctum is a locus (a sign) of possible appearance. It expands and endows photography with the presence of
what Barthes (1981: 57) calls a blind field, a ground from which the unseen
may climb to perceptibility. To be sure, this blind field (an absence in the field
of vision) is unforeseen by a camera operator. It can neither be intended nor
staged. In a picture taken, the unseen may show itself in the way it gives itself
to be seen, taking and moving the viewer, sometimes by surprise.

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Figure 1. Duane Michaels, Andy Warhol, 1958. Gelatin silver print with hand-applied
text, 6 x 9 inch image; 11 x 18 inch paper. Duane Michals. Courtesy of DC Moore
Gallery, New York. The punctum is not the gesture but the slightly repellant substance of
those spatulate nails (Barthes, 1981: 45).

The question is raised: if, as Marion (2003: 38) explains, the unseen, as
such and by definition, cannot be seen, then how is it perceived? The answer,
provided by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, is that human perception
is embodied, non-linguistic, corporeal. Barthes says the following: What it
[a photographic punctum] produces in me is the very opposite of hebetude;
something more like an internal agitation, an excitement, a certain labor too,
the pressure of the unspeakable which wants to be spoken (Barthes, 1981: 19).
For the viewer who sees it, the punctum (a linguistic sign of the non-linguistic
experience of Photography) strikes, pierces, wounds, leaves a mark it bruises.
What the careful reader will notice in Barthes analysis of punctum photographs, some of which are reproduced in the present article, is special attention given to hands and fingers, especially those that are partially concealed
(covered, for instance, by a bandage, or by fingernails, a strand of hair, or the
cropping of the photograph). What the partial object shows (a metonym, not
a fetish) is what cannot be seen but felt perhaps as a trace (or anticipation)
of a little death (la petite mort). As we know, Barthes (1975) uses this idiom
to address the corporeal experience of reading great literature and the site of
its possibility. It parallels his analysis of photography: What pleasure wants is
the site of a loss, the seam, the cut, the deflation, the dissolve which ceases the
subject in the midst of bliss (p. 7). The fact that readers (e.g. Olin, 2009) routinely disagree with the importance of signifying features Barthes identifies,
describes and reduces in photographs reproduced in Camera Lucida proves
his thesis correct that the punctum is existential and invisible except to ones
own subjective, lived-experience as embodied.
2. Thus far I have called attention to the importance of Barthes description
of Photography for the awareness it brings to absence (the unseen) in the visual
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Figure 2. Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, 1976. Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used
by permission. Wilson holds me but I cannot say why, i.e., say where(Barthes, 1981:
57, emphases in original).

field, where the punctum serves the analytic function of opening the study of
images to what Photography does not (and cannot) show; namely, the effect
(embodied perception) of visual communication (an expression).10 Later I discuss the specifically disturbing effect that certain photographs have on Barthes.
For now, the question to pose (why this matters) is, what does Barthes learn
from the phenomenological reduction of his description of Photography (Part
II of Camera Lucida)? I argue that the reduction helps Barthes learn how to see.
The photographic punctum not only moves Barthes but also trains him to see.11
By training rather than affirming perspective, the reduction of the description (a
phenomenological stripping away of non-essential perspectives) helps Barthes
attend directly to the experience of viewing (its phenomenology). This is the
paradox of the blind field of visual plenitude: exposure to it can be eye opening.
As an essential intellectual outcome of Camera Lucida, attending to the embodiment of human perception helps us account more broadly (viz. in addition to
text-semiotics) for the communication of visual signs.
To draw out the importance of this outcome, I turn now to the second
theme I perceive in Camera Lucida, the theme of exposure. To aid in my discussion, I leave communicology for the moment and draw on Nancys (2001, 2011)
philosophy of images. In particular, I focus on Nancys interest in the presence of
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visual images, both cinematic and photographic. I pay specific attention to two
key concepts relevant to the experience of visual communication: (1) mobilizing the gaze; and (2) a right look. Nancys discussion of these concepts deepens
Barthes communicology (semiotic phenomenology), and thereby broadens the
analytic horizon within which Camera Lucida may be read.
Nancy encourages us to regard visual images, both photo- and cinematographic, not merely as representations but as presentation.12 Cinema presents the
present, which is, by definition, in motion. As Nancy (2001: 50) argues, motion,
or movement defines cinema: a beam of light carries a visual image to a screen
that intercepts it; sense is made of the unity of the image by way of synthesis
(protension and retention) of discrete pictures projected at several frames per
second; while the motionlessness of a seated spectator offers support for being
carried away.13 To be sure, by movement, Nancy does not mean merely the modernist sense of mechanics; rather, his entire philosophical program is an attempt
to describe the process of change, of presence defined as coming to be (production or generation) and withdrawal (corruption or deterioration).14
Obviously it is easy to see movement of this kind in cinema, but not
easy to detect in photography because permanence rather than change is what
characterises photographic images (at least until the supporting medium fades
or crumbles). However, the movement of visual images (they move, carry,
bring us to dream) is not exclusive to cinema. Photographs, too, exhibit movement because they do not simply represent evidence of the present but deliver
it. Photos deliver images of phenomena taken from elsewhere. As I explain
below, the fact that a photographic image comes from elsewhere (the past)
and is delivered/transported to another time (present moments of viewing)
makes its appearance captivating because of that movement, a crossing of past
presences into visibility.15
For the purposes of the present discussion, it is crucial to focus attention on the visual image (or, sign) both as delivery and as an opening, a coming forward of the presence of the world. For example, consider how any given
movie is a singular opening. It begins in and as an opening within the global
flow of mass-mediated signs, of which the movie is a part, and to which it contributes. A movie is a part and a parting of visual images, not unlike a curtain
(think of dissolves and fades used to open and close movies). It shows (monstrates) as an opening, a parting between itself and the world from which it
takes images.16 A photograph, too, is an opening and a parting, the showing of
an image taken from one place and moved to another. It is in this sense, Nancy
(2001) claims, that visual images can mobilise the gaze. As the image opens, so
too can the eyes. He explains:
The image opens one look onto the other: the pictures and the onlookers. This opening provides a space, a distance both necessary and
respectful. At the same time it works as a relation. Film is not a representation, it is an attraction for a look, it is a traction all along its
movement. (p. 42)
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Whether in cinema or photography, if, as Nancy argues, a visual image is an

attraction and a traction for sight that can mobilise the gaze, then what is at
stake why images deserve scholarly attention is how viewers of them relate
to the world.17 This point is crucial to the present discussion. In French, relation can mean affinity, rapport, reference, connection and, most importantly,
communication (touch, moments of contact). Cinema and Photography are
the taking place of a relation to the sense of the world (p. 44). Both are active
looks, which is why expression in cinema and Photography can be regarded
not merely for visible content but also for existence, as conscious expressions
of perception.18 Nancys perspective is consistent with communicology: by
delivering visual sense of the world (taking and moving viewers), film is our
existence (p. 52). How we look conscious world engagement is cinemaphotographic.19
Now, it is because visual images open a space for looking (bring phenomena to visibility and offer a way to see, a relation) that we can talk about
what Nancy calls a right look. According to him, a right look is one that finds
the right distance from its subject (p. 36), a distance that is conducive to contemplating the present in its unfolding. To describe this look, Nancy defines
two terms: regard (French: to look or observe) and gard (French: to guard or
take custody.) The right look is one that waits and watches (keeps a lookout)
but does not lock up what it sees. It oversees (guides the look) but only to protect what it beholds (what moves by) and then lets go.20 In the practice of making visual images, a right look does not dominate that of which it may catch a
glimpse. It is neither surveillance nor command over what it holds and looks
after, such as with journalistic reportage or crime scene photography. A right
look melts rather than freezes what it sets upon. Looking from the right distance is actively passive: it lets pass what passes before it (Figure 3). It is therefore regarding and consequently respecting (p. 38, emphases in original).21
Although respect is always a judgment, in the context of cinema and
photographic images it is not, according to Nancy, a moral obligation. Rather,
respect means to be aware of what is there and to look out for it, attending
consciously to the power of the real and its absolute exteriority (Nancy, 2001:
38). Nancy argues that looking will not tap this power but will allow it to
communicate itself (p. 38). Finding the right distance for the right look is
not a question of technique. Medium shot, deep focus, or long take, any can
work. This is because, Nancy says, the right distance (distance juste) is exactly
a matter of justice. It renders justice to the world, to itself (p. 72). The right
look, a just look, is one that touches rather than grips the world for inspection. By avoiding the look of scrutiny, a just look exposes a void, a distance
or separation from a subject in respect of its presence and its exposure. The
upshot is this: Nancy helps us to understand how distance and separation are
fundamental (structurally required) for the coming into existence (the birth)
of presence and of images.
Photographic images are cut from a context. They appear, and can be
regarded to appear, against the background of the cut or opening of the world
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Figure 3. Hotel de Sens, rue de lHtel de Ville, Paris. By Eugne Atet.

Permission is OASC:http://www.metmuseum.org. a presence in the process of
making itself present (Nancy, 2001: 38).

opened by them, an exposure produced by the taking and moving of images.

To quote Nancy:
The image, then, is not the projection of a subject : rather, it is this
outside of the world where the gaze loses itself in order to find itself as
gaze (regard), that is, first and foremost as respect (gard) [watching out]
for what is there, for what takes place and continues to take place. (p. 64)

But isnt this banal, too? What are photo- and cinematographic images if not
parts of a communication sign-system (visual semiotic) through which we
sense the world outside? What is the experience of visual images if not being
drawn to contemplation, to say nothing of being mobilised? The sharper question to pose, with Nancy and for Barthes, is, do we see? Or, what do we see?
In fact, what should be replaced with where: in the visual image, do we see
elsewhere, perhaps outside the frame?
What Nancy offers to visual communication research is a perspective
on how a just image or right look maintains a distance, and for that reason, has
the power to attract and mobilise the gaze. If anything is to be incited by visual
images, that is it: awareness, not only of visible content but also a viewers relation to the world, an exposure (attraction and traction) to the generation and
deterioration of existence.22 To explain further, I return to Camera Lucida and
integrate Nancy with my interpretation (third step in semiotic phenomenology) of the possible meaning of Barthes experience of viewing photographs.

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3. Let me review the basic steps of Barthes analysis of Photography, and its
major outcome. In the description (first step), a photograph is a sign. It has
visible content (a signifier) offering viewers information about the past (a signified). As such, it is a record, an index (the existential bond of signifier and
signified: Lanigan, 1972: 174). In the reduction (second step), the photograph
is a signifier, not merely a record of the past but also a horizon of its visibility,
the limit of which (unseen, personal, lived-body effect) is indicated by a small
detail in the image, what Barthes calls punctum. Finally, in the interpretation
(third step) the photograph becomes a signified, offering possible meanings
for reflection. The essential communicology outcome is this: because a photo
presents both an image and a relation, whatever it means will have as much
to do with what it shows (expression) as with the personal experience of its
encounter (embodied perception). Photographic expression requires viewer
perception for there to be visual communication.
Readers familiar with Camera Lucida know that what grips Barthes in
his experience of photographs (attracts and mobilises his gaze) is recognition of
his exposure to the present, his consciousness of time in its coming forward and
withdrawal. Barthes point of reference in describing this exposure is death.
Death, or time consciousness, is the final theme I will discuss. I restrict my
interpretation to Barthes description of his experience of the Winter Garden
Photograph, a picture of Barthes mother as a child and centrepiece of Part II of
Camera Lucida. Barthes focus on it exemplifies his communicology contribution to understanding visual communication as a signbody experience.
To begin, Barthes, like Nancy, talks about photographic images as evidence not only of the lived world but also of distance, both spatial and temporal, between a viewer and the expression (visual presentation) of phenomena.
Although spatial distance (Figure 3) may be easier to see than temporal distance, the latter may be felt nevertheless. It is Barthes experience (his perception) of the photograph of his recently deceased mother as a child that leads
him to the major conclusion that Photographys referent is not what has been
but what will be and what will have been (future anterior), a shift of attention
from what is there in a photograph but gone at the present moment of viewing to what is here, now, but wont be in the future. By attending to photographs as visual communication that, in order to become meaningful, must
rely on something outside their frame (namely, an implied viewer at a future
moment of perception), Barthes becomes aware not merely of the absence of
his mother, but also of his own presence. Barthes experiences the expression of
the Winter Garden Photograph in reverse, as a perception of his existence and
its withdrawal. In the essential passage of Camera Lucida, he writes:
Ultimately I experienced her, strong as she had been, my inner law,
as my feminine child. Which was my way of resolving Death. If, as so
many philosophers have said, Death is the harsh victory of the race, if
the particular dies for the satisfaction of the universal, if after h
aving

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been reproduced as other than himself, the individual dies, having

thereby denied and transcended himself, I who have never procreated, I had, in her very illness, engendered my mother. Once she was
dead Ino longer had any reason to attune myself to the progress of the
superior Life Force (the race, the species). My particularity could never
again universalize itself (unless, utopically, by writing, whose project
henceforth would become the unique goal of my life). From now on
I could do no more than await my total, undialectical death. That is
what I read in the Winter Garden Photograph. (Barthes, 1981: 72)

Moving words. However, what is crucial for understanding Barthes work as

communicology (semiotic phenomenology) rather than as simple personal
narrative is to recognize the Winter Garden Photograph as an exposure of a
relation to the human life-world in its generation and deterioration. As Barthes
(1981: 96) states in a famous passage, late in the analysis: By giving me the
absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the future.
The statement underpins my main thesis that what concerns Barthes in
Camera Lucida is not Photography and photographic images, but time consciousness. To explain how this is so, let me recall two points made earlier and
then add a third.
First, photographic images come from elsewhere. The present presented by them (delivered, expressed) does not merely appear and nor is it
static. It moves. It passes, coming before (prior to) and ahead (in front) of a
viewer. The present persists in its coming and going. It cannot be grasped, only
approached. Second, photographs are presentations (exposures) of distance.
They exhibit a relation to the past and in so doing open a space for looking, an
opening that invites perspective (reflection) on present moments of viewing.
Third, with regard to death, although the dead may be visible in Photography,
death itself remains unseen, which is not to say invisible.23 Death cannot be
seen objectively because it remains at a distance. As Heidegger (1962[1926]:
294) says: Death is something that stands before us something impending
(emphasis in original: see Figure 4). It acquires visibility because of the perspective afforded by its distance, the right distance for contemplation.24
In its delivery of the present in withdrawal (the appearance of death
on its way), the Winter Garden Photograph is both an attraction and a traction for Barthes. First, an attraction: the world opens onto the photograph,
and the photograph opens a space (a cut, parting, location, or, to use Barthes
vocabulary, punctum) for something to be seen. It therefore guides perception:
Barthes is conscious of the world by way of its visual appearance (its presentation). Second, a traction: in its presentation of the world, the photograph
presents a relation, one that grounds perception, puts it in its place: the ground
that is my lived experience (Lanigan, 1972: 174). Barthes is in the world, and
perception is embodied. The photograph, an expression of perception, offers
perspective (a footing) for Barthes to see (to reflect upon) his sharing of the
world, an exposure to existence.
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Figure 4. Washington Navy Yard, D.C. Lewis Payne, in sweater, seated and manacled.
By Alexander Gardner. Civil War photographs, 18611865, compiled by Hirst D Milhollen
and Donald H. Mugridge, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1977. No. 0825. Library
of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/cwp2003001002/PP/). The photograph
is handsome But the punctum is: he is going to die (Barthes, 1981: 96, emphasis in
original).

We now have the intellectual resources to better understand and appreciate the key concepts of studium and punctum. Studium photographs offer
information about time past (antecedent data visual images in the realm of
historicity: public narrative, official remembering) whereas punctum photographs invite contemplation of time yet to come (anticipatory data visual
images in the realm of narrativity: private story, personal memory, the subjective limit of what can and cannot be spoken). In semiotic phenomenology,
punctum may be understood as a technical term for the intersection of two
axes: a vertical axis of simultaneity (synchronic/now, paradigmatic/here) and
a horizontal axis of succession (diachronic/then, syntagmatic/there) (Figure5,
Lanigan, 2014[1982]). As Lanigan suggests (2014, personal communication),
punctum is the boundary or point at which what comes forward (objective
time sequence, syntagmatic combination) suddenly reaches an end (is pricked
by paradigmatic selection, subjective simultaneity). For example, in a sentence, punctum is the point at which perspective is announced as the context

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Figure 5. Richard L Lanigan (2014[1982]) Lvi-Strauss Communicology model of

myth and reality (handchart). Available at: http://siu.academia.edu/RichardLLanigan
(accessed 28July 2014). Reproduced with permission.

for understanding a string of words, announced at the end by a tiny mark

(a question mark, exclamation point, or period) that retroactively inflects an
emotive impression (the order of analysis is the reverse of the order of experience: one must read back to recognize the command and report function of
the sentence).
This semiotic principle of the reversibility of communication applies
also to the visual communication (expression and perception) of Photography.
In a photo, paradigmatic selection is made from constituent (visible) elements
that are syntagmatically combined into a visible composition, a statement.
In order for it to communicate to a viewer, the photograph must be read
(decoded) in reverse. Just like the process of reading a sentence, and recognizing its meaning, a viewer begins with the visual expression (syntagmatic combination of elements, a context) and then works backwards, contemplating
the photographs paradigmatic selection (its absences, what could have been

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selected within the frame but was not). A photographs expression is what a
viewer perceives it to be.
Regarding time consciousness in the experience of photographic communication, what counts is not objective time but rather subjectively experienced time (Holenstein, 1974: 29). Lanigans chart (Figure 5) is instructive:
Perception of a photograph (its interpretation) relies on viewer recognition
of the there (syntagmatic combination, difference) and now (synchronic/
present, self) of the image as offering perspective for a context that is both
then (diachronic/absent, other, past) and here (paradigmatic selection, same).
There is both visible content in a photograph as well as what remains unseen
about the present moment of its viewing, unseen but nevertheless felt outside
the frame. What a photo shows (antecedent data) adds perspective to what
it doesnt show (anticipatory data). Punctum, therefore, announces comportment (embodied action, choice), one possibility motivated by the context of
the gathering and widening of perspectives. As Lanigan (2014, personal communication) summarizes: a punctuation point is the perceiver embodiment
that allows the viewer to see the meaning of the image for the first time.25
Returning to the Winter Garden Photograph, we are now in a better
position to understand why it is striking to Barthes rather than merely informative. The photograph pricks him. It draws and transports Barthes outside
and ahead of himself, mobilizing his gaze not to the past but towards (perception of) the future. In the final reduction of his description of the punctum
(Part II of Camera Lucida), he reveals that his experience of Photography is
no longer erotic agitation but dread: I observe with horror an anterior future
of which death is at stake (Barthes, 1981: 96). Barthes approach is not structuralist but entirely phenomenological, informed in part by Heideggers claim
that the source of dread is in fact consciousness, the personal sense of ones own
presence (being in time) that raises the meaning of being human as a question. Gazing upon the photograph of his deceased mother as a child, Barthes
is struck by recognition not of his mother but that he, like her, will one day
be no more than a phantom on a light sensitive medium for someone, perhaps, to see. Photographys theatre of visual communication jars his conscious
awareness of the finitude of human existence: I shudder, Barthes says, like
Winnicots psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred.
Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe (p. 96). Perspective shifts.
What Barthes reduction of the description of his experience (his
reflections on Photography) tells us most of all (its hermeneutic implications) is that if Photography has an essence it is its semiosis, an opening of the
world experienced in its withdrawal. Ian James (2007: 68) calls that feature of
visual images the exposure of life itself, of worldly existence. Positioned before
(spatial) and after (temporal) the coming of the world in those photographs
that catch the eye, a viewer is presented with a fundamental question: By what
right am I here, at this moment? The upshot is this: that to which Photography

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refers is not merely phenomena from time past, but to the possibility of future
encounters. The referent of a photograph is the context (absent and invisible,
but anticipated and semiotic) of its future viewing. Why else do we take pictures, or pose for them, if not to be seen (ex-posed) at a later date? In the
reversible relation of photographys visual communication, expression is not
without the impact of its perception.
My goal in this article is to contribute to scholarship on Camera Lucida
and research in communicology. I have shown how Barthes semiotic phenomenology adds to our understanding of Photography as the communication of a reversible relation. I have emphasized how Camera Lucida teaches us
how the world is exposed at a temporal distance in photography, an exposure
that broadens perspective on visual communication as a signbody experience. I end with a quotation from Camera Lucida that specifies what is perhaps the essential feature of Photography the silence of its communication:
Alas, however hard I look, I discover nothing: if I enlarge [the photograph], I see nothing but the grain of the paper: I undo the image for
the sake of its substance; and if I do not enlarge, if I content myself with
scrutinizing, I obtain this sole knowledge, long since possessed at first
glance: that this indeed has been: the turn of the screw had produced
nothing. In front of the Winter Garden Photograph I am a bad dreamer
who vainly holds out his arms toward the possession of the image; Iam
Golaud exclaiming Misery of my life! because he will never know
Mlisandes truth. Mlisande does not conceal, but she does not speak.
Such is the Photograph: it cannot say what it lets us see. (Barthes, 1981:
100, emphasis in original)

It should come as no surprise that Barthes concludes with this surrender to

speech and silence. The French word for mouth is la bouche, the embodied
location par excellence of communication. Recall Heideggers claim that human
being is the only being for whom the meaning of its being is a question, and
that it is that question that calls it into language, compels human beings to take
up the word to speak. We give voice to thought; express orally and perceive
aurally. It is by way of communication that we connect. It is by no coincidence
that saboucher is the French verb for to connect. Like a photograph, the mouth
is also a parting of existence (Nancy, 2001: 50), an opening where the signs
and codes that shape the meaning of being human, and in so doing, connect
us, are, in their turn, given form (projected in sound.) The possibility of communication resounds in speech (verbal expression) as it does in sight (visual
perception). We connect by way of openings, and especially by being open to
the exposure of our co-existence. The visual image is an opening for perception
and expression, a theatre not merely of the dead (Barthes, 1981: 31) but of
possible communication. At its best, this theatre remains open, open to the distinction between itself and that from which it parts, and takes parts. At its best
(which means, this is its limit) the visual image may be regarded as a parting of

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and distance between sense and world world as evidence of the future, and
not merely the past. Hence, the chief lesson of Barthes c ommunicology: it is
before the world of possible sense that we are exposed, which means we exist.
The photographic image is an exposure that, in its communication, makes
itself felt as our being-in-the-world.
F u n di n g
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Not e s

1. Capital P indicates the totality of the photographic enterprise as a signsystem.

2. The book is dedicated to Sartres phenomenological study, LImaginaire.
3. As noted by Goysdotter (2013: 103), Barthes refuses to separate
corporeality from the visual representations of the world outside us.
4. The principal scholar of the communicology tradition is Richard L
Lanigan (see Lanigan 1972, 1984, 1988, 1992, and several recent articles
such as 2010a, 2013).
5. As Lanigan (1997: 383) explains: The methodology of semiotic
phenomenology locates the system of semiosis (expression) as a conjunction
with the process of phenomenology (perception). For full details on the
methodology of semiotic phenomenology as communicology, see Lanigan,
1988, 1992, and Lanigans diagrams, 2010b, 2014).
6. Roman Jakobson classically describes the principle of reversibility of
communication in terms of encoding and decoding:
Encoding starts with the selection of constituents which are to be combined and
integrated into a context. Selection is the antecedent, whereas building up the
context is the consequent or aim of the encoder. For the decoder this order is
inverted [reversed].
First the decoder is faced with the context, second, he must detect its constituents;
combination is the antecedent, selection is the consequent, that is, the ultimate
aim of the decoding process. (quoted in Holenstein, 1974: 145)

7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

For example, Rabat (1997) and Batchen (2009); an important exception

is the art history of Mitchell (2005).
Cf. Lacrimal punctum: tiny tube connecting the eye to the lacrimal sac,
where tears come from.
The photographs I am speaking of are in effect punctuated, sometimes
even speckled with sensitive points (Barthes, 1981: 26).
Barthes (1981: 21) says: Affect was what I didnt want to reduce
(emphasis in original).
I dismiss all knowledge, all culture, I refuse to inherit anything from
another eye than my own (Barthes, 1981: 51).
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12. The technical differences between cinematic and photographic images,

modes of production and delivery, and traditions of inquiry (e.g.
psychoanalytic, cognitive, historical) into visual image ontology are
non-essential to my discussion of Nancys relevance to Camera Lucida.
13. The expression being carried away by visual images must be understood
as transporting, for example to imagined places (other possible worlds).
14. Nancy (2001: 30) states: Motion is the opening of the motionless, it is
presence insofar as it is truly present, that is to say, coming forward,
introducing itself, offered, available, a site for waiting and thinking (see
also Nancy, 1993).
15. This movement of the Photograph (of the order of photographs) I
have experienced in reality Barthes (1981: 87) says. The commonplace
practice of taking photographs (mostly digital today), manipulating
them (e.g. with filters), and sharing them (via SMS and inexpensive
or free public sharing services such as Instagram) demonstrates how
photographs are not merely static but change and move, containing both
static and dynamic aspects. See Van House (2011: 133) on the public and
transitory nature of personal photographs as objects of communication;
for a discussion of photographic and cinematic tenses in depicting death,
see Barwell (2007).
16. Nancy (2011: 234) says: There is not first of all [film] and then its act of
opening itself. It is straightaway in act, and this act is its passion: it opens
itself.
17. Images open as the possibility that there could be one thing or another
(Nancy, 2011: 233).
18. Cf. Lanigan (1972: 171173) on the lived body expression/perception
relationship exhibited in film:
the viewer is drawn into the image action and the sound dialogue (or musical
rhythm) as the ground of the immanent expression: the film. The film is the
pre-objective experience made manifest. The camera directs ones perception by
choosing the figure in the gestalt that must constantly contrast with the ground
that is my lived experience. What one sees and hears in the sound film is a
primacy of perception which the film director has chosen for us This is to
suggest that the visual image of a film is like the visual image that one sees in the
lived experience of others and things. (emphases added)
The image is analogue experience of the viewer to his or her own consciousness.
(Lanigan, 1997: 384)

19. The cinematographic gaze is a condition rather than a representation

(Nancy, 2001: 52, emphasis in original).
20. We look after what is ahead [we watch out for, engage as care (Heidegger)] and

look after the way it presents itself [it shows itself, and only thereafter, afterward,
may we come to look at it]: we let it present itself and thus we leave open the
field for its withdrawal. (Nancy, 2001: 38, emphases in original)

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21. The capturing of images captures nothing if it is not to let it go free again.

The framing, the light, the length of a take, the cameras movement contribute to
free a motion, which is that of a presence in the process of making itself present.
The films maker makes nothing other than a making-real and realization of the
real: of the real that a respectful gaze makes possible. (Nancy, 2001: 38)

22. As Barthes (1981: 38) says: Ultimately, Photography is subversive not

when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatises, but when it is pensive, when
it thinks; cf. Cobley and Haeffners (2009) discussion of communication,
interaction, and the uses afforded by digital cameras.
23. As Marion (2009: 707) says: Death is the name par excellence for
precisely that to which no one can testify, what no one can see, because
no one can claim to have experienced it.
24. Barthes (1981: 83) perceives in a photograph of a young schoolboy, he is
dead; in the photo of Lewis Payne (Figure 4), he is going to die (p. 95);
in the photo of a girl with her family, long deceased, he says the future
disturbs us, agonises us (p. 105), and so on.
25. See Lanigan (1988: 2526) on punctuation, (p. 231) for myth inversion.
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B iograp h ical Not e

Garnet C Butchart is Assistant Professor of Communication and

Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University. He specializes in semiotics and
philosophy of communication. His research appears in several international
journals, and he is co-editor of Philosophy of Communication (MIT Press). He
has lectured on ethics and visual semiotics at the Jerusalem Center for Ethics
in Israel. His current research examines the ideas of community and communication in recent movements in contemporary continental philosophy.
Address: Duquesne University, 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15282,
USA. [email: butchartg@duq.edu]

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