Roland Barthes – Camera Lucida – An ultimately depressing book

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Camera Lucida, by Roland Barthes, is an odd book. It has become a classic text on the subject – yet Barthes was not a photographer, and had little time for colour images or ‘clever theories’ from the photographer’s perspective (such as Cartier-Bresson’s ‘Decisive Moment’). In fact his work contains a surprising paucity of reference to other research. Barthes notes that an …