The bright chamber

Remarks on Photography

The photograph is an image without a code - although codes of course control its reading. There is something tautological about it: a pipe is always a pipe here. This is why the semiotician Roland Barthes no longer uses the science of signs as the guiding principle of his last book (published in 1980), but rather the fascination that certain photographs exerted on him. What is this attraction that "makes something inside me ring"?

"The characteristic of the so-called advanced societies is this: they now consume images and no longer, as earlier societies did, beliefs; they are therefore more liberal, less fanatical, but also more 'false' (less 'authentic') -"

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Author: Roland Barthes

Number of pages: 137 pages

Published: 12.10.2009