Fig. 1.
Wearing, Gillian. Self-Portrait at Three Years Old. 2004. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Chromogenic print, edition 5/6, 71 5/8 x 48 1/16 inches (182 x 122 cm).
Let me begin with a personal experience. One day, quite some time ago, in a well known New York museum, I happened on a photograph. The portrait of a young girl – head slightly tilted, blank expression– a pretty straightforward school picture with a slight touch of awkwardness not uncommon to this category. I wondered why these kinds of portraits often look a bit peculiar. Especially this one. So I scanned the picture to try and find some details, some clues for a possible answer. Was it the old fashioned white blouse with the bow tie? Or the doll-like features, particularly the combination of the blouse and the black hair? Maybe it was what caught my eye in the first place: the indifference of the face staring at me? Perhaps. I was not quite sure. So I continued my investigation.
The card next to it gave me some additional information. I think it said: “.. Self portrait. By looking through the holes of the little child’s mask, the artist asks questions about time, identity .. ” (I am sure there was more, but this is all I remember). When I looked back at the image, I realized it was not a simple straightforward portrait, but a photograph of the artist wearing a mask based on a picture from her childhood. I was looking at a photograph of a mask of a photograph. Knowing it was more than just an old portrait, my perception of the picture had shifted. But at the same time, it had not made that big a difference. After all I was looking at the same picture, only now with some additional interestingly sounding text to think about in relation with the photo. A bit disappointed, I walked away. I liked the concept, but the work had not sparked anything in me, nothing aesthetically thrilling. Just some light intellectual wonder.
This was soon to change. After observing some other artifacts in the exhibition, I returned to the photograph. At first, alternating between the whole of the picture and the eyes of the girl, I still was not too much impressed. Then I noticed the eyes were sunken abnormally low in the sockets. I noticed a thin grey line on the left side of the left eye: a small shadow marking the difference between the mask and the artist own eyes beneath. Suddenly it hit me. I realized that the eyes of the little girl, were actually the eyes of the artist. This all happened, like a bee’s sting, very quickly. As if the artist was staring right at me, exposing me. A feeling of being caught. I was fixed on the eyes of the artist, staring back at me through the mask. Of course I had read this in the description, but only now I felt a “real” impact: for a moment it was as if the artist was there in person. An angry look, but scared at the same time – as if she was trapped. For a moment, she or it, or whatever it was, became more real than the photograph itself. My heart rate had sped up. But I was not really scared or frightened by it. Maybe there was some anxiety, but at the same time there was a strong fascination. Something drawing me closer, rather than making me run away.
When, about a month ago, I read Roland Barthes’s CAMERA LUCIDA for the first time, this memory immediately came back to my mind. Barthes distinguishes between what he calls the studium – – that what the subject or spectator perceives as the general theme of the photograph, which Barthes denotes with terms like “knowledge and civility”, “politeness”, “culture”, “the body of information”, “that what generates an average effect”– and the punctum, that what breaks or punctuates this field, as well as “pricks”, “wounds” or “bruises” the particular viewers subjectivity . Whereas the studium, conditioned by social norms and values can be liked, be the object of more or less pleasure, be interestingly talked about, can even be an object of politico-ethical shock and indignation; the punctum is that which distorts both the (signifiers constituting the) studium as well as the subjectivity engaged with the photograph (Barthes 26). Barthes’s description of his encounter with the photograph comes close to the my own experience. Until the eyes of the artist became “real” to me, I dwelled in the order of the studium. I (re)searched for intelligible details, information and knowledge, I learned a bit and this made me like the photograph. But one detail disrupted my cultural undertaking, my bildung.[1] The moment I noticed the thin grey line, I was subjectively “stung” and, simultaneously, my perception as spectator of the studium radically changed. In this sense, It is possible to view the eyes as a detail that constitutes my particular punctum, in the way Barthes has theorized it.
We should, however, be careful with such a quick equation. What I took to be my punctum (the thin grey line and eventually the pair of eyes) was a detail intended by the artist. This is important because, as Micheal Fried has suggested, Barthes precludes intended details as constitutive of a punctum. According to Fried, Barthes observed that:“the detail that strikes him as a punctum could not do so had it been intended as such by the photographer”. If Barthes talks about the punctum as a “certain detail”, we can be sure that the artist did not intend to captured it: “The punctum, we might say, is seen by Barthes but not because it has been shown to him by the photographer, for whom it does not exist” (546). A detail, in other words, can only be a punctum if it was shot without the photographer being aware of it. A photographer in some way always stages a scene that he wants the spectator to see. Details that make up this intended image will have a meaning: the photographer means something with them, something that he wants to convey to his audience (what could be called culture or knowledge). Therefore, intended details are from the start included in the studium. At the same time, whenever a photograph is taken, certain details will be captured which the artist was not aware of. Barthes’ own example is a photograph of two disfigured children. But the peculiarity of the children is not what interests him, for it is all too obviously staged, intended. Barthes is “pricked” by two details that seem to be contingently captured: the small bandage round the finger of one of the children, and the Danton collar of the other. These details “just happen to be there”, never staged, meant or intended by the photographer. Fried therefore concludes that intended details can never constitute a punctum.
In this way Frieds argues that Barthes can be placed in the tradition of antitheatrical critical thought. In Frieds reading, the punctum is precisely that which guarantees the anti theatrically of the photograph: “In short for a photograph to be truly antitheatrical for Barthes it must somehow carry within it a kind of ontological guarantee that it was not intended to be so by the photographer . . . The punctum, I am suggesting, functions as that guarantee.” If we accept Frieds reading, we must conclude that my experience of what I thought was a punctum, could not be one, for the detail that constituted it was clearly intended. The eyes were obviously intended by the artist. They did not “happen to be there”. Fried’s argument ultimately rests upon the assumption that a detail that causes a punctum cannot be intended by the photographer.
Nonetheless, it were precisely the eyes that pricked me. It was as if I saw two pairs of eyes: the ones of the child, which could be counted as ordinary (intended) detail of the studium, and the ones of the artist behind, which would be the “punctual detail”. We could say that this second detail was not directly placed by the artist, not specifically intended by the photographer, and therefore can be thought as the unintentionality that is necessary for a detail to be a punctum. But this would be hard to argue, because the difference between mask and the artist eyes behind it was exactly the point of the work: it was explicitly mentioned in the description next to it. To take a more empirical view, this detail could never be legitimately called a detail, because, in fact, there are only one pair of eyes present (which were clearly intended). This photographic work of art thus poses a problem. If we take the artwork and its effect (my experience) seriously, it must be possible for an intended detail to cause a punctum. It challenges Fried’s argument, and puts forward the possibility to think the punctum without unintentionality as its necessary condition. On the one hand it forces us to reevaluate Fried’s line of thought, and on the other, it give us a chance to think of the punctum in a different way.
Fried bases his argument for a great part on two related passages in Camera Lucida, both about intentionality. The first one is as follows. “Certain details may “prick” me. If they do not, It is doubtless because the photographer has put them there intentionally” (Barthes 47) and “to recognize the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographer’s intentions” (27). I agree that if a detail does not “prick” the subject, it is doubtless put there intentionally. This does not violate my own experience: every detail that did not prick me (the bow tie, the hair) was intentionally staged by the artist. I also tend to agree with the second point: when I recognized the studium (when I undertook my investigation, I read the card and I found that it was a photograph of a mask) I inevitably encountered the photographer’s intentions. From this Fried concludes that, for Barthes, a “detail that strikes him as a punctum could not do so had it been intended as such by the photographer” (Fried 546). However, this does not follow from both passages. In short, Barthes claims that details-that-are-no-punctum are always intentional. But he does not claim the opposite: it is not true that details-that-are-intended cannot bring about a punctum.
The difference consists in the point of departure. If we are not pricked by a detail, this detail is of the studium, because a pricking would constitute a punctum. If we recognize the studium (if we wander about through the details that make up the studium) , we must necessarily encounter the intentions of the photographer, because the studium is defined as the field of culture and knowledge, and this includes what the artist tried to show in his picture. Thus, if we are not pricked, we recognize the studium, and if we recognize the studium, we recognize the artist’s intentions. Starting from the recognition of the studium, we necessarily encounter intentional details.[2] However, it does not follow that if we start with an experience of a punctum, we will necessarily trace it back to an unintended detail. We cannot claim that if we are pricked, the detail must have been unintended. We can only be sure that if we are not pricked, we encounter the artist intentions. To make this clear, let me rephrase Barthes: “certain details may prick me; If they do not, It is doubtless because the photographer has put them there intentionally. If they do, we cannot be sure if the photographer has put them there intentionally. They could have been intended, but probably were not.” If a detail pricks a subject, it would constitute a punctum. The detail is probably unintentionally shot. But f it was later revealed to be an intended detail after all, it would not invalidate this experience. If it was finally revealed that the details that constituted Barthes punctum (the bandage, the collar) were after all intended by the artist, it would not invalidate Barthes description of these details as a punctum. If a punctum hits, a punctum hits: we cannot choose to be hit by one; we cannot be taught to experience a punctum.
In the following passage, it becomes clear that Barthes never denies that intended details can cause an experience of the punctum . He does not claim that the punctual detail must necessarily be unintentional, only that it is “at least not strictly” intentional and that it “probably” must not be intentional:
“Hence the detail which interests me is not, or at least is not strictly, intentional, and probably must not be so; it occurs in the field of the photographed thing like a supplement that is at once inevitable and delightful; it does not necessarily attest to the photographer’s art; it says only that the photographer was there, or else, still more simply, that he could not not photograph the partial object at the same time as the total object”(232).
It is possible, while it may not often be the case, for an intended detail to cause an experience of a punctum. But we must also say that, at the very least, every detail is not strictly intentional. It is also something more. But it is therefore not a completely unintended detail, because it could be intentionally put there. That which we call the detail could be intended by the photographer. What is interesting is that Barthes also speaks about the photographers art. The detail, which might be intended, might also attest to the photographer’s art. The point is only that it does not necessarily attest to the photographers art. If we read Barthes closely, it seems that it is ultimately not about the unintentionality of the photographic detail. It is something else. If the punctum is not limited to the unintentional quality of the detail, it is, for Barthes, not the unintended detail that is the punctum, and “that what guarantees antitheatricallity” as Fried puts it. For it is always possible for a fully staged, intended photographic work of art, theatrical in every sense, to cause an experience of the punctum.
But what then is the punctum? The artwork under consideration offers a rethinking. First, we are dealing with a photograph of the artist wearing a mask based on a picture from her childhood. It is a photograph of a mask of a photograph. This gives the effect of the double eyes, at the same time of the mask and of the artist behind the mask; it is ultimately what the work is about and therefore we must call this detail intended. In an empirical sense there is only one detail, the eyes, and this detail is intended. But in my experience this detail was not limited strictly to its intention. For it created the effect that the artists eyes were present at the same time as the eyes of the mask, piercing through it and pricking me. If we take this effect seriously, we can say that the intended detail creates the impression of something more than only the detail which is (strictly) intended. This “more” occurred in the field of the photographed thing “like a supplement.” The artist could not not photograph the eyes that belong to the mask at the same time as her own eyes piercing through the mask. But the effect of the eyes was intended this way, so we can take out the double negation, and change it to an affirmative statement: the achievement of this work of art is the ability of the artist to photograph the eyes that belong to the mask at the same time as her own eyes piercing trough the mask.
What we should focus on is that the eyes emanate something through the photograph. Something that was always there, trapped, caught behind a mask, but suddenly breaks through. In other words, a punctum that pierces trough the studium. There is something that is more than the pictorial representation alone, something that sticks to the image that cannot be cut loose. The eyes that pierce through the eyes of the mask, function as a reminder that something was there, that there must have been more than its representation alone. They remind the spectator that photograph necessarily presupposes a real referent, “behind the mask of representation”. If this realization caused in me the experience of the punctum, the latter cannot be equated with the unintentionality of a detail. And in fact, if we follow Barthes’s central quest for the eidos, the essence of photography, we will discover that it is not the unintended detail that matters, but exactly the relation between the photograph and its referent.
In his search for essence of photography, Barthes compares the photograph against other forms of image representation, most importantly the painting (76). The question is in what way the photograph is unique in relation to the painting. In other words, why does the punctum only occurs with a photograph, never with a painting? According to Barthes the difference lies in the relation of the image to it referent: “First of all I had to conceive, and therefore if possible express properly (even if it is a simple thing) how Photography’s Referent is not the same as the referent of other systems of representation”(76). The referent is that what the image represents. All images in some way represent something. However, the relation between representation and referent is different for each one of the image forms. What is represented in a photograph always necessarily points to a referent that once was a real thing: “I call ‘photographic referent’ not the optionally real thing to which an image or a sign refers but the necessarily real thing which has been placed before the lens, without which there would be no photograph” (76).
This is what makes a photograph essentially different from a painting. The latter also points to a referent, but this referent is always cut from its representation. There is no necessary link: “The painting can feign reality without having seen it. Discourse combines signs which have referents, of course, but these referents can be and are most often ‘chimeras.’” There is as it were a gap between the representation and referent, so that the image can deny the existence of its referent. An abstract painting for example, does not point to a really existing referent, certainly not in the way that a photograph does. “Contrary to these imitations, in Photography I can never deny that the thing has been there. There is a superimposition here: of reality, and of the past.” What is essential for the photograph is thus the relation between representation and referent. “And since this constraint exists only for Photography, we must consider it, by reduction, as the very essence, the noeme of Photography. It is Reference, which is the founding order of Photography” (76). For Barthes the essence of photograph is thus: “That-has-been,” or the “Intractable: . This “That-has-been”, in other words “death” (as it is no longer), stands for its necessary relation of the photographic representation to a real referent, a referent that necessarily “has been”. Every photograph has this essence, of course, so the photograph of the masked artist here discussed as well. However, this photograph, is staged in such a way that it, in a way, “pushes the essence to the surface”, thereby increasing the likelihood of a punctum. In this sense the work “thinks” the punctum: If we take the mask of the child (including its eyes) as the photograph, the eyes of the artist that pierce through the mask are the intractable, stubborn remainder of the referent that has been.
The specific relation between a photograph and its referent is why the punctum can only come about within a photograph. If this relation did not exist, we would never have to care about it necessary “having been”. It is simply not there. It cannot cause a disturbance, because it is not connected with it. There is a cut, a gap between representation and (possible) referent. There is no “that-has-been” that emanates through a painting. As Barthes puts it, “the photograph is literally an emanation of the referent”. The eyes of the artist piercing through the mask make this connection undeniable. “A sort of umbilical cord links the body of the photographed thing to my gaze” (80-81).It is “this is what makes the photograph unique compared to the other “systems of representations” (76).
So what can this tell us about the punctum? The punctum is that which both disturbs the studium of, and the spectator engaged in the photograph (26). While in the case of the painting, the “studium” and the subject remain safe and intact, with the photograph they are always at risk. The photograph does not safeguard the negating power of the punctum, precisely because of its essence: the sticking of the referent, of the “that-has-been” to the representation. There is a necessary relationship , otherwise there would not be a photograph. Coming back to our initial question, the punctum is not the unintended detail, but the very essence of photography: the necessary connected referent. Therefore the punctum is actually the same as the essence: the “that-has-been”. However, it always manifests itself as, at the same time as an experience, and a detail (as immanent to the representation or studium). The punctum is nothing other than the spectators sudden realization of the “that-has-been”. Because of the nature of the relation between what the photograph represents and its implicit referent (which is the ”that-has-been”), this realization necessarily manifest itself as a detail: as a sign in the order of representation.
The punctum is thus the same as the implicit referent, which is the “that-has-been”, the essence of the photograph. It is a negative category, because it is felt only through the disturbance of the positive categories of the subject and the studium (it does not consist in the positivity of a detail. The punctum is not present by itself: it is only a necessary implication of every photograph). When a punctum hits, the consistency of the symbolic order, that is, the studium, is disturbed. The “fantasy” is broken, which gives rise to a sudden uncertainty. This event always lurks behind the photograph, , it can always strike, because of its essence. However, normally we are, as Barthes says, indifferent to this essence (77) Normally we are immersed in our culture, knowledge, politeness, in other words: in the studium. But it is always possible that this seemingly closed structure is disturbed, and often this comes about by a “detail”. This, as Barthes recognizes, is most likely to be an unintended detail(not intended to be staged or captured by the photographer): the details that are intentionally shot are much more invested with the studium and therefore do not remind us of the essence of photography: the “that-has-been”. It is thus not the detail that disturbs us, but the realization of “that-has-been”, which we experience as the punctum. The punctum brings about, emanates, the essence of photography. When the punctum hits, we are awakened of our normal indifference. “It is this indifference which the Photograph had just roused me from”(77).
The photographic artwork I encountered allowed us to challenge the view that the punctum is caused by an unintended detail. Rather, when we experience a punctum, we encounter the very essence of photography: the necessary relation of the representation to its referent, the “that-has-been”. The eyes of the artist piercing through the mask exemplify the way this referent is implicated in every photograph. The realization of this essence is caused in different ways, of which the unintended detail is one. However, it is not the only way. The eyes that had pricked me, were clearly intended by the artist. Nonetheless they gave rise to a sudden realization of a real thing, trapped behind the mask. They shattered the studium. This was my experience of the punctum.
Works cited
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Print.
Fried, Micheal. “Barthes’s Punctum.” Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida. Ed. Geoffrey Batchen. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2009. 141-167. Print.
[1] Bildung (German for “education”) refers to the German tradition of self-cultivation.
[2] We might object that some detail that did not prick us, could be capture without the photographer being aware of it. But it is Barthes argument that if a detail did not prick us, they were doubtlessly intended. In any case, it does not invalidate the point that details that do prick us, could still be intended.
Crude Thinking 