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Popular Culture Review
the photographic image derive from a staged, profilmic event somehow nested in
the “external” environment, those that form the non-photographic image emanate
from a particular consciousness whose coordinates are “internal” and psychological.
The difference is one of reflection-projection.*^ 1 am certainly not claiming that the
photographic image in any way is less manipulated, or less artificial, than animated
or digitalized images, but merely that in terms of material basis and means of
composition it diverges crucially from the latter.
Barthes’ notion of the punctum may help to refine our understanding of the
difference between photographic and non-photographic images. For Barthes, the
studium is that dimension of the photograph which we normally engage with. Our
interest in the studium may be of an anthropological, aesthetic or generally
epistemological nature. The studium, Barthes says, is “to hke, not to love” (26).
The punctum, on the other hand, refers to that part of the image that has been
captured inadvertently, and which “rises from the scene, shoots out of it hke an
arrow, and pierces me” (26). In paintings, animation and CGI, the punctum, I would
argue, is an impossibihty since these practices engender images in which even the
smallest detail in some way must be dehberate. Barthes’ key sentence in this respect
is the following: the camera “could not not photograph the partial object at the
same time as the total object” (47). Even here Barthes’s theory is reminiscent of
Bazin’s, particularly the latter’s endorsement of the idea of ambiguity.*^ His much
discussed preference for deep space cinematography, camera movement and the
long take rather than editing is commonly thought to indicate this. The montage
style as exemplified by someone like Eisenstein, this theory has it, excessively
controls the attention of the viewer, thus leaving httle room for equivocation and
interpretation. Where the camera lingers on a particular space, and exploits the
potential of staging actions in depth, the viewers are free to determine which areas
within the frame they want to explore. By having cinematic space unfold in
uninterrupted duration, the image takes on a sense of ambiguity lost to montage.
Andrew astutely condenses the insights of both Barthes and Bazin in this passage:
Everything in a photo is potentially significant, even and especially
that which has escaped the control of the photographer pointing the camera.
Here the indexical function of the photo comes to the fore, outweighing
its iconic function. The photographic plate is etched with experience, hke
the unconscious (x).
There is a sense of organicism, of fluidity, in the photographic approach that
escapes other pictorial media. The relationship between Barthes’ theory of the
punctum and Bazin’s stress on the immanent ambiguity of the photographic image,
however, deserves to be more closely examined in a separate article.