Camera Lucida Reflections on Photography

by Barthes, Roland; Howard, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780374532338
• ISBN10: 0374532338
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780374521349, 9780809013982, 9781784876012
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-10-12
• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• More Book Details

Summary

A graceful, contemplative volume,Camera Lucidawas first published in 1979. Commenting on artists such as Avedon, Clifford, Mapplethorpe, and Nadar, Roland Barthes presents photography as being outside the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind, and rendering death and loss more acutely than any other medium. This groundbreaking approach establishedCamera Lucidaas one of the most important books of theory on the subject, along with Susan Sontag'sOn Photography.

Author Biography

ROLAND BARTHES was born in 1915. A French literary theorist, philosopher, and critic, he influenced the development of schools of theory, including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, and post-structuralism. He died in 1980.

Table of Contents

“[Barthes] has accomplished in this extraordinary book something finer than mere polemic. En route to his last painful discovery, Barthes takes the reader on an exquisitely rendered, lyrical journey into the heart of his own life and the medium he came to love, a medium that flirts constantly with the ‘intractable reality’ of the human condition.” —Newsweek