Studium and Punctum

In Camera Lucida Roland Barthes lays out two concepts for the theory of photography, primarily concerned with being able to critically analyse photographs more coherently. The names he gives to these concepts are based on Latin words, studium and punctum. Barthes describes studium as meaning an “application to a thing, taste for someone, a kind of general, enthusiastic commitment, of course, but without special acuity”[1]. This can be further clarified to say that it is a photo that you enjoy looking at, but on a superficial level, you do not love it. It is the objectively factually interesting points of a photo. Barthes says that the kind of interest studium refers to is political, historical or cultural. Punctum, on the other hand, is a very different thing; it is something deep in the photo that grabs your interest. It is the personally touching detail of the photo that wounds you and draws you in. Punctum literally means sting, speck, cut, little hole, a cast of the dice or the notion of punctuation. Barthes sums this up saying “the photographs I am speaking of are in effect punctuated, sometimes even speckled with these sensitive points…a photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me”[2]. Punctum is the subjective, emotionally touching details.

Having set out what Barthes’ basic theory is, I shall now come to discussing my selected photograph. My photograph, which is in black and white, shows four figures placed around a bench in a Paris park. My grandmother on the left in profile, looking to the right, my mother next from left leaning down arranging the food, her sister sitting on the bench, a toddler looking to the left at her mother, and my uncle standing on the right and looking straight at the camera. It was taken in about 1970; my mother is roughly 19, her brother 17, her sister two and their mother about 48. They are having a picnic lunch which is laid out on the bench and presumably the photographer was my mother’s father. The bench is slightly off centre to the left, with all the figures contained within its width; they are maybe five feet from the camera, with the tallest person taking up about 3/5ths of the frame. There is lush grass behind them and many tall trees.

I feel this picture offers little in the way of punctum to anyone but a member of my family, as the punctum I see is a very personal one. The studium, by its very nature anyone should be able to see.  The studium of this picture could be the old fashioned coke bottles, or the fashion of the clothes on display, or sociologically it could be a family scene from 40 years ago that is interesting, as a frozen snapshot of life so long ago now. The studium of a photograph is of the order of liking it, not loving. I hardly believe anyone would love this photograph for these reasons. They may however like seeing a park in Paris on a lovely warm looking day. On studium Barthes also says “To recognize the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographer’s intentions…to approve or disapprove of them, but always to understand them”[3]. Here we see family life, the dated fashion, the peaceful park, which is empty other than them. All these things interest me, and they could do so for anyone I feel, but I do not love them, and I don’t see how anyone could.

What does prick me, as Barthes phrases it, is seeing my family at this time. My uncle and I share a great interest in music, and I know that he was in the habit of writing freelance reviews of concerts he saw for British magazines. It is as if looking at this picture I can see the fanatical devotion to music in him that we have only ever discussed. This photo was taken at the end of the 60s, a great time for music and the way my uncle is dressed evokes that era of music fans to me; he looks like how I would imagine a young critic of that time, even though he is only 17 and had not started his reviewing yet when this picture was taken, I can see it in his future.

My mother is also a great punctum to me, seeing her at the age I am now. She was at university in Paris, but was still living at home as her rather controlling parents didn’t want her to leave home. I thank her for all the freedom she has given me, freedom that her parents did not give her; indeed when she was my age she spent a lot of time looking after her two year old sister when she really wanted to be going out with friends. Also, seeing her with long straight hair in a ponytail (the preferred style at the time) is an amazing sight to me, as I have only ever seen her with short naturally curly hair. This entirely different life, so long before I was around, fascinates me.

My grandmother is also very interesting to see here. For much of my life she had dementia, and therefore I never felt like I got to know her at all, to ask her about her past. Here I see her, slightly younger than my mother is now, but showing many similarities, the hair, the way she watches her children proudly. This is the side of her I never knew; I only knew the woman who asked where her children were when they were sitting in front of her.

I suppose really the way to summarise my punctum of this picture is with Barthes second punctum, Time. “This new punctum, which is no longer of form but of intensity, is Time, the lacerating emphasis of the noeme (‘that-has-been’)”[4]. All that I have discussed are of this nature, of the passing of time, and it is that I have not witnessed this past in any great detail that interests me so greatly. The mother who was once like me, experiencing life at university much differently, the uncle I have so much in common with (he is now an art historian), viewing him as the young music fan of the 70s. My aunt as a toddler is certainly amusing for me to see, but it does not sting me in this same way; and finally my grandmother, who I never truly knew, seeing her as a mother to her children, and much younger. If I wanted to dive even further in, I could say that this photo is taken in a district of Paris where some of our close family friends now live, and who we visited very recently, possibly even going in this same park.

Analysing a picture in terms of studium and punctum show how many ways there are to think about a photograph, and most importantly that the impact it has on you as an individual can be very powerful and very unique, I reiterate that I do not think my photograph would have any impact on someone outside my family.

Bibliography

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1993)

---

[1]Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1993), p. 26

[2]Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1993), p. 26-27

[3]Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1993), p. 27-28

[4]Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1993), p. 96

Final Mark: 65%, 2-1