My premise is that this distinction will allow us to more clearly understand the role played by the viewer in the experience and interpretation of images. Barthes is a focus, but this chapter is designed to raise a primary distinction between photographs and images. My purpose here is to interrogate the photographic image in historical and cultural terms. An extraordinary number of essays and articles have been written about CAMERA LUCIDA and Barthes’ work. CAMERA LUCIDA is part analysis, part theory, a personal examination of the role of photography in Barthes’ life and an homage to Jean-Paul Sartre’s book, THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGINATION. Barthes provides us with the social and cultural matrix at the heart of his activities as a viewer and as a cultural analyst. This juxtaposition of time and space is at the root of Barthes’ meditation on photography in CAMERA LUCIDA. The photograph as described by Roland Barthes allowed him to establish a relay between Jerome (in the 1850’s) and the modern readers of CAMERA LUCIDA. Jerome’s eyes had been privileged enough to look into Napoleon’s eyes. The eyes of the emperor’s brother once looked straight into a camera, in this case ‘manned’ by a photographer whose duty it was to take pictures of the rich and powerful.
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