prominent international cities.

Though Nicholas Serota, the leading

force behind Tate Modern, contends that the use of the old power
plant was a conscious decision that stetmned from the contemporary
practice of converting industrial spaces into galleries, the fact is, this
choice was also strategic. Tate Modern wanted to come up with a
new plan that would "rival that of the Georges Pompidou Centre" in
Paris.I 1 Yes, Tate Modern is a great space to view great art but,
above and beyond this, it operates to reinforce London's primacy
within the world's cultural map. It is no accident that one can see
the enormous structure (especially the new glass extension on the
roof) from the runways of Heathrow airport! It is understood that
the Gallery at the turn of the century is an icon of prestige, a pedagogical institution and first and foremost an urban attraction.
If it seems that the discussion of Richard Long's work has
been lost to a discussion circling around the curation and commercialization of the art gallery itself - it has. As cities vie with one
another for profile and reputation, the content of the gallery space
becomes less of a concern than the structure that houses it and the
attention it garners for the city. The contribution Tate Modern will
make to tourism - an expected 40% increase from Scandinavia,
North America, Europe, and Japan - dominates the discussion
around its existence. 12 Such a statistic is also indicative of Tate's
desired audience. Its quantitative success is more precious than its
qualitative success as a collection. Quantitative success is nothing
new to the British art world that uses the media hype that surrounds
the Turner prize to measure the success of its contemporary art, an
annual prize that is an "accolade received on entry to the inner circle
of the art establishment"- a prize that Long won in 1989, which,
for me, proves why Long's calming arrangement of stones can sit
happay side by side Monet's tranquil waterlaies. 13
11

Deyan Sudjic, "Modern Masters," Tate Magazine: Special Edition 21

IN SEARCH OF THE REAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY:

An Exploration of Roland Barthes' Writings on Photography
Alan Reed
This survey of Roland Barthes' writing on the subject of
photography straddles a divide in his oeuvre that threatens to complicate this essay's coherency. Barthes wrote about photography in the
very early and very late periods of his career, both when structuralism was just emerging and when it had given way to poststructuralism, both when he was a passionate structuralist and when he was an
equally passionate poststructuralist. Thus, Barthes' writings on photography are, on one hand, motivated by the cultural context of the
photograph (structuralist) and, paradoxically on the other, the way
the photograph eludes, exceeds, frustrates and ultimately subverts the
cultural forces trying to bind its meaning (poststructuralist ).
Fascinatingly, this tension between these structuralist and
poststructuralist interpretations has - from his structuralist beginnings - always permeated Barthes' d1eories of the photograph. On
the one hand, there is the inevitable saturation of the photograph by
cultural inscriptions, but simultaneously Barthes has always insisted
that there is something to the photograph that exceeds those inscriptions. This essay unfolds in two parts which share the same motivation: they are both in search of that something that is beyond the
cultural construction of the photograph in the hopes that it will answer the question, what is it about photography that stands apart
from the field of language? In the first part I examine Bard1es' structuralist theories; in the second, his poststructuralist reflections m
search of the elusive piece of the real adrift in photography.

part one

(2000): 24.
12

Strong 44.
Virginia Button, T!Je Tumer Prize. (London: TI1e Tate Publishing
Ltd., 1999) 70.
13

Barthes' early theory of photography revolves around the

co-existence of mutually opposed forces within every photographic

image: the first being the reality that the photograph is a direct and
uncoded impression of (what he calls) the denotative, analogical aspect,
or analogue; the second being the connotative, cultural messages inscribed on that impression of reality.
Despite offering these analytic categories and making excellent use of them, Barthes fails to satisfYingly differentiate one from
the other; he neglects to find the point where denotation gives way
to connotation, where the reality the photograph is an impression of
ends and the cultural inscription of it begins. The discovery of that
point is our goal, and to do this I have chosen a pair of photographs
from a book by Dave Mckean called, fittingly, A Small Book if Black
and White Lies, 2000. Mckean is one of the pioneering figures in the
field of digital photography, and it is almost an understatement to
say that he revels in the transfonnative possibilities of the medium.
His photography, if we can call it that, borders on the fantastic. In a
sense, he takes the truth of photography and tells lies with it, lies
which we will use to reveal exactly what the irreducible truth, the
analogical property, of photography is.
In order to analyse Barthes' theory of the photograph it is
first necessary to apply it. Barthes' analyses of photographs typically
begin with a written description of their denotative, analogical contents followed by a reading of the connotations anchored in them.
To begin tl1en, I can describe of Mckean's photograph
rated Edges, 2000 (Fig. I), as a torso . of a woman.I From here I
should proceed to trace, or "skim off," the connotations that are
anchored in the reality that statement describes, but instead I would
like to problematise its denotation, or rather, the denotation's correspondence to the reality of the image.
This is not the torso of a woman. It is a collage of partial
photographs of a woman's torso put together in a silhouette like that
of the torso of a woman. It does so convincingly, but close attention
to the right side of the woman's torso, just below her breast, reveals
the photograph's artifice- the body photographs do not extend to
1 Dave Mckean, A Small Book
Spiegel Firie Arts, 2000) plate 18.

ff3

of Black a11d White Lies (Rome: Allen

the edge of the torso. The edges of the torso are not and have never
been part of a literal body, but are rather what the title of this photograph refers to, that is, Serrated Edges.
Although this is a dramatic and somewhat contrived example, the trick this photograph plays on its viewer is no different than
the trick every photograph plays. Namely, the reality that photography appears to represent is not at all real (denotation) but rather the first
cultural inscription made on the photograph (connotation). The literal
"reality" of the photographic image, insofar as it is perceived as such,
is the work of language and that is something the viewer brings to
the image. It is not an innate quality of the photograph.
In order to more fully understand the semiotic operations at
work here, consider what it took to create the image of a woman's
torso: a breast, a nipple, a navel, the hint of ribs and a belly ( denotative signifiers). From these parts comes the incorrect assumption of a
woman's torso (denotative signified). This is to say that the denotative signified departs from the reality of a photograph and moves
into language. In some, if not most, cases the denotated signified
corresponds to the reality of tl1e situation - but there is no way to
verifY that correspondence. At best, it is a coincidence, and therefore
it is a matter of faith on our part that the situation was what its photograph appears to be.
Here we have the point of transition from reality to language in the movement from the real thing that is the denotative
signifier to the coded denotative signified. To even assume that a
thmg is a signifier, that a thing is a reliable index of something else
or is in some other way meaningful, is to cross over into language.
In short, as soon as the photograph is recognizable as a part of some
understanding of reality it is no longer real, but instead a part of
language.
So, to revise Barthes' theory, it is not denotation that is the
trace of the real within a photograph, instead it is the denotative
signifier apart from the denotated signified, or more precisely, the
denotative signifier in tl1e moment before it signifies; in the moment
when it isnothing more than a thing. As soon as the denotative

nifier is associated with something else, when it becomes part of a

whole, when it gains meaning, when we recognize it as signifier, it
has already entered into language.
The second photograph I will present also undennines the
correspondence between the reality the photograph signifies (which
is to say, creates) and the reality that the photograph is. Except that
instead of demonstrating the gap between denotative signifier and
signified like the former photograph did, this one illustrates the difference between the signifiers and what they compose, between the
reality of the image and the reality language brings to it, and that the
reality.we see, or rather expect to see, is the latter. This second photograph is titled The Tip of my Tongue, 2000 (Fig. 2). 2
With respect to the reality the photograph denotes, we
have either a man sticking out his tongue which happens to be a
stick, or perhaps a man with a stick protruding from his mouth
where his tongue ought to be, or perhaps a man with a stick stuffed
into his mouth. In this case the denotative signifiers do not coalesce
into a single denotated signified - the reality of the in1age eludes
and frustrates our attempts to bring it in line with a signified reality
constructed through language. There is no single successfUl denotation made by this photograph that is not absurd, while at the same
time the trace of reality within the photograph is still obvious. The
pieces this man is made up of are real, like the pieces of the woman
in the previous photograph, as is the branch protruding from his
mouth. All the denotative signifiers, before they are recognized as
such, are real; it is what they come together as that is not. Which is
what usually happens.
This photograph explicitly shows that the denotative signified - the thing the picture appears to us to be - is simultaneously
made from real things and a culturally inscribed fiction that has
nothing to do with the reality of the image it is mapped onto. That
is how to explain why tlus image is both perfectly sensible and utterly impossible. It is perfectly sensible insofar as the things it de-

picts are real. It is just that these things are juxtaposed impossibly
a judgement we come to because of our culturally conditioned
assumptions as to the nature of reality. It is when culture tries to
enter the image, in the form of an understanding of the perception
of it, that we believe the image to be false. Tongues cannot be
sticks, we say to ourselves, everyone knows that. This is because the
reality language projects fails to anchor in the reality the image portrays - a failure that implies a gap between the reality of language
and the reality of the image. When the reality of language, of culture, judges the reality of the image to be impossible, it reveals its
difference from the image and its parasitic relation to the reality of
the image.
Thus the denotative reality of the photograph is not the
trace of tl1e real within the photograph but instead the first departure from the reality of the image and the first apprehension of the
photograph by language. It is more accurate to claim that the denotative signification grafted onto the photograph at best coincides with
the reality of the photograph - there is no necessary relation between them. It takes a photograph that lies, which is to say a photograph whose reality does not coincide with that anticipated by language, to reveal the subtle process by which all photography lies by
passing itself off as the truth.
part two

Barthes' theory of the photograph

ontology remained constant through to the end of his career. However, his realist stance is applicable only so far as the ontology of photography
extends itself, and for a poststructuralist that is not very far. He
himself says that the question of whether or not the photographic
image is coded is not very, if at all, usefi.tl to the analysis of photography; For Barthes, the essence of a photograph has nothing to do
with its resemblance to reality: "Photography's noeme [essenceJ has
nothing to do with analogy (a feature it shares with all kinds of rep-

z Mckean plate 24.

90

til

resentations )." 3 This moves the analysis of photography to a very

different ground, a ground that is defined by the delicate balance
between the essential and the contingent, between what the photograph is and the contingency of its reading. a balance that permeates
Barthes' Camera Lucida. This balance is achieved by the subtle differentiation of the perception - the phenomenology - of the photograph from its essence. In Kantian terms, this is the discrimination
between phenomena and noumena, the latter being the tmth of the photograph which in no way affects its meaning, the former, the inverse.
This differentiation is so subtle that it is possible to overlook it, particularly in the theory of the punctum, a style of viewing
that Barthes explicitly opposes to the culturally mediated studium.
The latter, an extension of Barthes' earlier writings, is another name
for the process by which the denotated image is caught up in connotative cultural codes. This in contrast with the punctum, which is not
coded 4 , "which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow,
and pierces [its viewer]." 5 This agency attributed to the image is
easy enough to correlate with the essential
but Barthes is more
sophisticated than this reductive conflation.
Barthes was a close reader of Lacan, beginning in the very
late I960s, 6 which was the moment in Lacan's writing when he
turned his emphasis from the exploration of what he termed the
Symbolic register of his psychoanalytic theory towards the Real.
With this in mind, Barthes' statement _that "the Photograph ... is the
absolute Particular, the sovereign Contingency, matte and somehow
stupid, the This (this photograph, and not Photography), in short,
what Lacan calls the Tu.che, the Occasion, the Encounter, the Real, in
its indefatigable expression" 7 takes on a very complicated meaning, a
3

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard (New York:

Hill and Wang, !981) 88.
4 Barthes, Camera Lucida 55.
5 Barthes, Camera Lucida 26.
6 Roland Barthes, RoLmd Barthes by Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, I977c) 145.
?Barthes, Camera Lucida 4, last emphasis mine.

meaning I will explore through an analysis of the photograph of his

mother Barthes calls The Winter Garden Photograph.
First, I am obliged to observe that 11le Winter Gardm P!Jotograph is not a photograph of Barthes' mother, Henriette Barthes, but
instead a photograph of a girl named Henriette Binger. A five-yearold girl is not a grown woman who has birthed a child, neither is she
the almost ninety-year-old woman she was when she died. What
Barthes identifies as his mother is not literally, not really her. The
fact tl1at Barthes does not reproduce The Winter Garden Photograph in
Camera Lucida is perhaps the soundest indication that he is very much
aware that the encounter with the real, that is the punctum, has nothing to do with the ontological reality of the photograph. He confirms this by writing: "I cannot reproduce T!Je Winter Garden Photograph. It exists only for me." 8 Such a personal reality can have nothing to do with the obstinately universal essence of the photograph
but instead some other quality of it.
What exactly is it that Barthes finds in The Winter Garden
Photograph that is so intensely his mother? It is
the distinctiveness of her face, the naive attitude of her
hands, the place she had docilely taken without either
showing or hiding herself, and finally her expression, which
distinguished her, like Good from Evil, from the hysterical
little girl, from the simpering doll who plays at being a
grownup ... all this had transfonned the photographic pose
into that untenable paradox which she had nonetheless
maintained all her life: the assertion of gentleness. In this
little girl's image I saw the kindness which had fonned her
being immediately and forever. 9

And is this really something real? Is it really a quality that the photograph alone isolated and preserved, and is therefore essential to it?
Literally, yes, but who other than Barthes could possibly recognise
this essence of his mother for what it is? Who else would know that
8
9

Barthes, Camera Lucida 73.

Barthes, Camera Lucida 69.

tJS

it means precisely this? Who else would know the intensity with
which it means precisely this? This is to say that although what
Barthes identifies in the photograph is, or more precisely was, tl1ere, it
is not the image qua sign, but rather a construction. Barthes insists
that the punctum is not coded; however, I believe that it is.
I believe the difference in our use of the word stems from
our different interpretations of Lacan's statement that the unconscious is structured like a language.I 0 The unconscious is both similar to language and in some equally important way different from it.
It is a signifying system that operates according to principles like
those of language but, unlike language, does not operate in the social
sphere. When Barthes says codes, I suggest that he is referring to the
codes that circulate within language, within social discourse, within
consciousness, and that this definition of code is the limit of his use
of the word in Camera Lucida.
In Camera Lucida, Barthes is coricerned with reclaiming the
photograph for very personal pleasures - in freeing it from the play
of cultural codes in order to immerse it in himself. In this context
the word "codes" stands in for the enemy, the cultural apparatus that
simultaneously buries the photograph and puts it into circulation in
social discourse; codes are the agents of the studium. If codes are understood to be the agents and components of culture, of the Lacanian symbolic order, then of course the punctum is not coded after all, it is something that is intensely personal and absolutely not
social.
Even if the cultural codes which constitute the studium are
not at play in the punctum there is nevertheless something producing the
meaning of the punctum that is very much like language insofar as it
brings to the photographic thing some meaning. Barthes writes that
"whether or not [the punctumJ is triggered, it is an addition: it is what I
add to the photograph and what is nonetheless already there."II If
the punctum is in part an addition, where does it come from? The
IO Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book IlL The Psychoses, trans. Russell
Grigg (London: Routledge, 1993) 167.
II Barthes, Camera Lucida 55.

94

Winter Garden Photograph conjures memories of his mother for Barthes,

memories he knew he had but that nonetheless escaped his recollection, his consciousness. The Winter Gardm Photograph evoked those
tangible but unreachable memories in a manner much like the studium
evokes cultural codes. It remains, then, to identifY the signifying
system whose component codes are memories and which evokes
them.

In The Interpretation ?f Dreams (the text that is a part of the

foundation of Lacan's return to Freud) Freud writes that
our memories - not excepting those which are most
deeply stamped on our minds - are in themselves unconscious. They can be made conscious; but there can be no
doubt that they can produce all their effects while in an
unconscious condition. 12

It is the unconscious, the signifYing system that is according to

Freud the indiscriminate accumulation of all memory, that is the
signifYing system which produces the meaning of the punctum, as language produces the meaning of the studium. The signifYing gesture,
that produces the punctum and makes one thing stand for another, is
the displacement of some unconscious memory onto the photograph
qua signifier. The Winter Gardm Plwtograph is a photograph of his
mother as a girl, and Barthes obviously has no memory of her as
such. This photograph can therefore not be the evocation of a literally remembered moment. Instead the photograph stands in for the
figure of his mother without being the mother he remembers, a signification produced by the forces governing the unconsCious.
This is, in Lacanian terms, also the real of the photograph,
which is the measure of complexity surrounding the use of the term
that I alluded to earlier:

n Sigmund Freud, The Penguin Freud Library, Volume 4: Tl1e luterpretatio11

?f Dreams, trans. James Strachey (London: Penguin Books, 1967) 689.

e;s

On the one hand, the tenn "the real" seems to imply a

simplistic notion of an objective, external reality, a material
substrate which exists in itself, independently of any observer. On the other hand, such a 'nai've' view of the real is
subverted by the fact that the real also includes such things
as hallucinations and traumatic dreams. The real is thus
both inside and outside.U

So in one sense, the real of the photograph is the always elusive thing
- the real that is outside; in another, it is the evocation of the real
within the subject- the real that is inside, in the unconscious.
Thus the photograph is real in both the interior and exterior
senses of the tenn. Returning to Barthes' definition of the photograph that I cited earlier- "in short, [the photograph is J what Lacan calls the Tuche, the Occasion, the Encounter, the Real, in its indethe real that the photograph is an encounfatigable expression" 14
ter with is both the real inside and out: it is the inescapable particularity of the thing-in-itself and the inescapably particular memories
each of has (or doesn't have) of it.
In contrast to his ruthless pursuit of the signifYing forces
motivating the studium, Barthes grants the unconscious the liberty of
ambiguity: he is content to let it roam through his experience and
writing without monitoring it. The fact that Barthes did this is not
an oversight on his part, rather it is a rhetorical effect. The text is
more a polemic than a work of theoretical analysis; Barthes intended
it as a guide to the viewing of photographs, not an explanation this is why he uses phenomenological methods, which is to say
methods grounded in subjective experience. He wanted to write
about what he did, so as to present himself as a model to be imitated.
Thus he could not write about the unconscious. Barthes writes from
a position where he is subject to the unconscious, and as such he
docs not write about it as he does write from it. From this position,
the unconscious takes on a certain palpability, a certain unquestion13

Dylan Evans, A11 Iutroductory Dictionary

(London: Routledge, 1996) 160.
14 Barthes, Camera Lucida 4.

96

able reality: this because if what the unconscious were doing was
revealed, explained, put into language, it would hardly be unconscious.anymore. Barthes sacrifices the theoretical coherency of Camera Lucida in order to make it more effective as an imitation of experience and consequently as a guide to be imitated.
The explanation of the punctum as the product of unconscious signifying forces also ties in neatly as an explication of the
objective of the polemic function of Camera Lucida. Barthes is attributing a personal quality to the photograph, an agenda that is severely
complicated by poststructuralist theories of the subject. I refer to
the work of Lacan, Althusser, and Foucault, all of which claim that
the self is both produced by and inextricable from the social discourses we all necessarily participate in. This raises the following
dilemma: if the person as such is inextricably a part, a product even,
of the cultural field, how different can it be to appreciate photographs personally? Is doing so not simply a repetition of the cultural
field, albeit in a different discursive theatre? By providing a theoretical location for the punctum in the unconscious I have provided, in
the precise theoretical teru1S Barthes avoided, an explanation of a
poststructuralist understanding of what exactly can be personal
about the appreciation of photography and what is "real" about that
appreciation.

of Laca11ian Psychoa11a/ysis

97

9S

Fig. I

Fig. 2

Dave Mckean. Serrated Edges, 2000. rpt. in Dave Mckean, A Small

Book of Black and White Lies (Rome: Allen Spiegel Fine Arts, 2000)
plate 18.

Dave Mckean. TI1e Tip of my Tongue, 2000. rpt. in Dave

Mckean, A Small Book of Black and White Lies (Rome: Allen Spiegel
Fine Arts, 2000) plate 24.