Camera Lucida

When I sat down to read this book, I was planning to read a little at a time throughout the week. Instead I ended up reading it all in one sitting. I kind of regretted doing this later since I started spacing out towards the end of the book because I was tired of reading. But I also liked getting the whole experience of the book in once sitting. You can't do that with many books, but Camera Lucida is the perfect amount of pages for it.
I really liked Roland Barthes thoughts about photography and how he really picked it apart in every way possible. For instance, I liked how in the beginning of the book, he talked a lot about posing for photos and how it is hard for a person to knowingly be in a photo, without posing. "I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into another image." I liked how Barthes phrased this idea of how we all become someone we are not when we know we are being photographed. This thought made me realized how true this is for everybody and how difficult it must be to catch someone's true self in a photo. Why is it that people put on a different personality when they are looking into a camera? Maybe they feel the camera is judging them in a way. I know that I do the same thing and pose when someone is taking pictures of me. It's hard not too. But when Barthes talked about it in Camera Lucida, it made me really wonder why I do this. I guess it might be because being completely yourself in front of a camera or an audience is kind of reveling and personal. It does make you feel like you are being judged. So I guess we all pretend to appear "normal" in the photo in order to not expose who we truly are, and be judged for it. This thought also made me want to try to take some portraits of people to try to see if I can capture non-posy pictures.
Another part of the book I really liked was when Roland Barthes was talking about a specific photograph of his mother that had meant so much to him. He kept calling it Winter Garden and said that when he was looking through many old photographs of his mother, he was, "looking for the truth of the face I have loved," and found it in this photograph. His mother was 5 years old in the photograph and something in her facial expression and stance, reminded him of his mother. I found it interesting how he didn't see this part of his mother in any other photograph, except this one. After reading all about this picture, I really wanted to see the photo, to see if I could find what he was talking about in this little girl. Barthes also talked about how this photograph will look just like any ordinary picture to anyone else who saw it, but to him, it was everything. I found that very interesting because I kept wanted to see the picture and feel what he was feeling, but I know that I would never understand what this picture brings to him. I liked the idea of how a simple photograph could bring such intense emotions to someone. It made me wonder if I had a special picture that meant this much to me, but I couldn't think of any. Overall I really enjoyed this book. It opened my eyes to many aspects of photography that I have never thought of before.