Only under closer observation and with recourse to the accompanying texts did exceptions begin to stand out. Most of the 50 photographs appeared at first glance as impersonal and anonymous and almost insufferably nostalgic: the majority of them black and white. The exhibition aimed to examine to what extent the concept of the punctum, developed in an era of analogue photography, is still viable in today’s digital age. Reflections on Photography’, Séamus Kealy, the new director of the Salzburger Kunstverein, asked 50 artists and theorists to each select one photograph and write a brief text explaining the reasons for its selection. 1996-2014, Collageįor his first exhibition ‘Punctum.

Several generations of writers have since reflected on and speculated about the significance of the punctum for photography’s theoretical interpretations without arriving at any consensus. But what was unique to the photograph, according to Barthes, was its punctum, which he defined as the sensory, intensely subjective effect of a photograph on the viewer: ‘The punctum of a photograph is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).’ Barthes contrasted the punctum with the studium denoting a general approach to a photograph that is conditioned by historical and cultural experiences and is not categorically different from how other art forms are approached. The essay, published in 1980 as La Chambre claire (Camera Lucida, 1981), stands alongside Susan Sontag’s On Photography (1977) and Walter Benjamin’s Kleine Geschichte der Photographie (1931 A Short History of Photography, 1972) from almost 50 years prior as one of the standard works of photography theory.īarthes described the photograph as ‘the living image of a dead thing.’ This was something that it shared in common with the painting, which had originated – as documented by ancient Egyptian funerary objects – in portraits of the dead.

When his mother died, French cultural theorist Roland Barthes found consolation in a picture of her as a child and, taking the picture as his starting point, in writing an essay about photography.

Barthes photography