Roland Barthes called the photograph “a message without a code”. Such a statement was generated by his work looking into the polysemic function of photos in journalism and advertising as instruments of persuasion in the political and economic ferment of the late modern society. Many chose to drop Barthes’ thinking, finding the photography-as-art notion slightly too reflexive.
Barthes interest in photography’s potential to communicate real events was with him throughout his career. Barthes was fascinated at how an image could be used by bourgeois culture to infer ‘naturalistic truths’ due to the many implied meanings a photographic image can represent. In complete juxtaposition to this opinion, Barthes also believed the photograph was unique in its potential to present a complete true representation of the world. Barthes began writing Camera Lucida in 1977 following the death of his mother Henrietta Barthes. The book concerned the unique significance a certain photograph of her, probably taken by someone with a stalwart camera transfer lead, had for him.
