Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes - 9780809013982 - Compare Prices on New & Used Textbooks, Cheap Textbooks

This personal, wide-ranging, and contemplative volume--and the last book Barthes published--finds the author applying his influential perceptiveness and associative insight to the subject of photography. To this end, several black-and-white photos (by the likes of Avedon, Clifford, Hine, Mapplethorpe, Nadar, Van Der Zee, and so forth) are reprinted throughout the text.

		Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes, Richard Howard (Translator) ISBN-10: 9780809013982 ISBN-10: 0-8090-1398-3 ISBN-13: 9780809013982 ISBN-13: 978-0-8090-1398-2 Paperback 1982-05-01 Hill and Wang Find Lowest Price
Editorials

Product Description This personal, wide-ranging, and contemplative volume--and the last book Barthes published--finds the author applying his influential perceptiveness and associative insight to the subject of photography. To this end, several black-and-white photos (by the likes of Avedon, Clifford, Hine, Mapplethorpe, Nadar, Van Der Zee, and so forth) are reprinted throughout the text.
Reviews

confession i want to plug in the revolution (digital) to this book, in the style of mad libs. meanwhile i haven't read camera lucida for a while.
Just this.. The only disparaging thing I can say about this book is that it caused me to purchase a better dictionary.
shocked I am somewhat stunned and dismayed by the negative reviews of this book. In fact, it has seem to elicit a sense of vitriol in some. It is a brilliant book. How does one state simply such a complicated phenomenon. One doesn't. Those who rated this book so poorly biggest gripe was the complexity of the writing. Well - it is a complex topic. But, I think Barthes beautifully and deftly counters this complexity with his personal reflections. The book is both a critical assessment of photography and an emotional one as well, and this is what makes it so wonderful. It is not wholly unexpected that most all the negative reviews of this book come late in the day - in the ever increasing time of sound-bites, instant pleasures and generally non-reflective immersion.
Totally disappointing Sorry to say, although Roland Barthes is an icon to some. This short book is self-indulgent, unintelligible, and therefore useless. The author is far more interested in himself than he is interested in the subject.
You'll literally need a Ph.D. to understand this book If you're thinking of reading this hoping for some insight on the creative process of the photographer, don't look to this ponderous, jargon-laden critique of "The Photograph". Barthes readily admits he's not a photographer and his viewpoint is only from side of the observer and the object. Barthes does offer a couple of intriguing ideas: the concepts of "studium" and "punctum," but since he seems to concentrate almost exclusively on photographs of human subjects (portraits and photojournalism), much of those ideas aren't as developed as they should be. Instead, he tries to explain why certain photographs evoke an emotional response (the punctum) in him. Of course, I may have misunderstood his point completely but not for want of trying. His esoteric use of existentialist terms makes it a tough read for those without a substantial education in philosophy. In any case, much of his critique has been overturned and made obsolete by the advent of digital photography (he explains early on that he doesn't have the patience to be a photography because he wants an instant result; there's nothing more instant than a digital photo) and digital photo manipulation (e.g. Photoshop).