Photography: Studium and Punctum

Barthes defines photography as a form of disorder. For him the Photograph mechanically repeats what
could never be repeated existentially; its essence is the event, that which is never transcended for the
sake of something else. The photograph in essence captures death or in Barthess words the
photographic image becomes Death in person

Barthes in his theory of what constitutes an excellent photograph states that it must contain two main
elements, the studium and the punctum. The Studium can be defined as the space that haunts the
photograph. It can also refer to the range of meanings available and obvious to everyone. The studium
speaks of the interest which we show in a photograph, the desire to study and understand what the
meanings are in a photograph, to explore the relationship between the meanings and our own
subjectivities. An excellent photograph haunts us like a specter. This is the studium. We keep looking at
the photograph as if we are waiting for something to show up but it never arrives.

The punctum is that quality of the photograph that pierces and wounds us. Barthes writes, like an
arrow and pierces me); it escapes language; it is not easily communicable through/with language. The
punctum is a detail that attracts and holds the viewers gaze; like Sleeping Beautys spinning wheel it
pricks or wounds the observer and makes us think.

The photograph below contains both the studium and the punctum. It was taken by Kevin Carter and
won the Pulitzer Prize

When the picture was first published in the New York Times an editorial argued, The man adjusting his
lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the
scene. Carter committed suicide three months later. This photograph haunts us because it shows us
how far our culture is willing to go in order to capture an image. It pierces us because we are aware that
the girl will be eaten by the vulture. Aesthetics took precedence over ethics. Carter could have saved the
girl but he shot the image and walked away.