Essay by Sandra Kemp

30Nov06

In researching the texts I plan to discuss for my final paper, I came across this essay by Sandra Kemp entitled “‘Myra, Myra on the wall’: The fascination of faces.” In it, Kemp discusses image, identity, and desire in relation to photography. She analyzes several literary texts, including Camera Lucia and “Veronica’s Shrouds” to compare […]

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Forgotten Summer

15Nov06

Callie   While reading both Calvino and Barthes’ thoughts on photography, I began seeing photography as an intrusion.  I had always thought that photography captured moments to be remembered forever, but the more I read the more confused I became about my stance on photography.  Barthes writes that photography is not actually capturing a moment, but […]

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Love and the Lens

14Nov06

One of the most engaging ways to read a piece of literature is to discover connections and differences between yourself and a character.  One theme that quickly emerges is the power of one’s love for a parent. This is where the camera comes in, as it is photography that can eternalize a loved one. To accentuate […]

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Confession: I Killed a Man

14Nov06

“The photograph is like old age: even in its splendor, it disincarnates the face, manifests its genetic essence.” -Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida Upon reading this quote, I thought of a photograph that I took about a year ago on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. An old man with aged […]

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Why would you take a picture of that?

14Nov06

Tom D. “This fatality (no photograph without something or someone) involves photography in the vast disorder of objects-of all the objects in the world: why choose (why photograph) this object, this moment, rather than some other? Photography is unclassifiable because there is no reason to mark this or that of its occurrences;” -Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida […]

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Born A Slave

14Nov06

Upon finishing Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, I was left unsatisfied. Barthes is not only wordy, but he is also giving “expert information” on a subject that he merely is opinionated about. He can never decide what photography actually is because he constantly has to polarize his answers. For example, Barthes states “Such are two ways […]

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Triggered Memory

14Nov06

By: Chelsey R. “One of the first instincts of parents, after they have brought a child into the world, is to photograph it.  Given the speed of growth, it becomes necessary to photograph the child often, because nothing is more fleeting and unmemorable than a six-month-old infant, soon deleted and replaced by one of eight […]

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14Nov06

-Beth P.   “What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.” — Barthes, Camera Lucida (Pg 4) I chose the above quote from Camera Lucida because, out of the whole of the novel, this line, barely four pagesin, stuck out in my mind […]

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Only Once

14Nov06

Shua What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.”                –     Barthes Camera Lucida 4 Photo by: mere poppins A seed blossoms into a flower only once. It flourishes while alive and withers away to nothingness once its time is up. Of course the […]

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Take a Picture it Lasts Longer

13Nov06

By: Madeline  “Having exhausted every possibility, at the moment when he was coming full circle Antonino realized that photographing photographs was the only course that he had left-or, rather, the true course he had obscurely been seeking all the time.”   -Calvino “The Adventures of a Photographer” 186  This photograph was taken by Ansel Adams. […]

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