23/2/10 The Punctum

Symbols of Peace, Religion, and Violence in one Image

Koen Wessing: NICARAGUA. 1979

- It is this publication Nicaragua that was very instrumental for Roland Barthes (in Camera Lucida) to define, what he called “The Punctum" in photography. The punctum can be seen as a partial object but in Wessings case it was the two nuns who happened to be walking past the soldiers at the time. Just this small detail can change the way we read the photograph entirely.

· Camera Lucida – “It is a mistake to associate photography, by reason of its technical origins, with the notions of its dark passage (camera obscurer). It is camera lucida that we should say such was the name of that apparatus, anterior to photography, which permitted drawing an object through a prism, one eye on the model,the other on the paper); for from the eyes viewpoint, “the essence of the image is to be altogether outside, without intimacy, and yet more inaccessible and mysterious than the thought than the innermost being”.

- The camera lucida performs an optical superimposition of the subject being viewed upon the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist sees both scene and drawing surface simultaneously, as in a photographic double exposure. This allows the artist to duplicate key points of the scene on the drawing surface, thus aiding in the accurate rendering of perspective. At times, the artist can even trace the outlines of objects.