somebody else's thought

the things barthes writes is his "camera lucida: reflections on photography" are really great. so simple but so interesting. he's actually sarcastic sometimes about it and other times photography is not one of his "favorite people". however, i'll post some of his thoughts while i'm reading what was in his mind.

"life consists of these little touches of solitude." 3
(when only you can see what no one else can)

"what the photograph reproduces to infinity has occured only once:the photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentally." 4

"photography is unclassifiable because there is no reason to mark this or that of its occurences; it aspires, perhaps, to became as crude, as certain, as noble as a sign, which would afford it access to the dignity of a language: but dor there to be a sign there must be a mark; deprived of a principle of marking, photographs are signs which don't take , which turn, as milk does. whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible: ii is not it that we see." 6

"i feel that the photograph creates my body or mortifies it." 11

"photography is anything but subtle except in the hands of the very greatest portraitists, i don't know how to work upon my skin from within." 11

"i lend myself to the social game, i pose." 11

"for the photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity." 12

"is landscape itself only a kind of a loan made by the owner of the terrain?" 13

"in front of the lens, i am at the same time: the one i think i am, the one i want others to think i am, the one the photographer thinks i am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art." 13

"i do not stop imitating myself (...). i invariably suffer from a sentation of inauthenticity." 13

"for me, the photographer's organ is not his eye (which terrifies me)but his finger: what is linked to the trigger if the lens." 15

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