Books : Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

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Author name: Roland Barthes

 : Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 770
EAN num: 9780809013982
ISBN number: 0374521344
Label: Hill and Wang
Manufacturer: Hill and Wang
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 119
Printing Date: May 01, 1982
Publishing house: Hill and Wang
Sale Popularity Level: 23805
Studio: Hill and Wang




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Editor's Notes and Comments:

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.




Customer Reviews
User popularity level:  out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - 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.



Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - Just this..
The only disparaging thing I can say about this book is that it caused me to purchase a better dictionary.



Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - 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.



Rated by buyers 1 out of 5 stars - 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.



Rated by buyers 2 out of 5 stars - 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).

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