Have you ever looked through old family photographs or seen one in your house that has always caught your attention? As I was looking
through old photographs in my mom’s photo albums, I saw so many that I had never seen before. Images of my family from generations past that really made me wonder what it was like to live back then. There were pictures of my great-great grandparents and grandpa that I never got to meet that I could tell had stories behind them. We have been talking a lot about photography as a genre in class, and I began to realize that photography can tell a story.
As I continued to look at the photographs, the one that caught my eye was a family photograph from my Mom's side of the family with her Mom and Dad and three siblings. I did not know where they were at or what they were doing, but I wanted to find out.
At first glance this photograph really interested me, which as Roland Barthes would say is the “studium.” Barthes defines studium in his book, Camera
Lucida, as the element in a photograph that makes someone interested in
it. As Barthes states, “The studium is the order of liking, not of loving” (27). I
liked looking at this photograph because it represented something about my
family, and I could tell that there was a story behind it. Studium is also the obvious things within the photograph that the photographer wanted you to see.
Barthes also talks about the piercing element in a photograph, known as punctum, so I began to look for it my photo.
Barthes defines punctum in Camera Lucida as the element, “which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me” (26). There were a lot of interesting elements in the photograph of my family, but I found it harder to find the thing that pierced me. For me the punctum was the camera around my uncle’s neck, and while it is only a small detail, it was punctum to me. Since punctum is subjective to the viewer, the thing that pierces one person in a photo might be different for another person. Ultimately, the camera made me wonder why were they not using that one and who was then taking the photograph?
Besides the camera was not the only thing in the photograph that I was left wondering about, but I also wanted to know why so much of the background was in the photograph, instead of a closer shot of my family? Was there a purpose in including a lot of the background or was it unintentionally done? I think that my family actually wanted the background to be captured in the photograph in order to show the viewer where they were at. It seemed to me that this picture was capturing a specific memory, and the place they were at was a major part of it.
After addressing the studium and punctum in my photograph, I definitely wanted to go further into the photograph in order to first find out what was happening in the photograph and what was going on at the place my family was at. Then I realized that I could find out things that went beyond what I could actually see in the photograph such as the time period and what it was like when my Mom and her siblings were growing up. I wanted to know how life was different from then to now and what changes my Mom saw between her generation and mine.
My mom has told my sister and I stories about her when she was growing up, but I was excited to know more. This picture was like a telescope into
the past. In Photography: The Whole Story, edited by Juliet Hacking, Henri Le Secq writes that, “if photography gives the viewer reality then it is an intoxicating one, a world of fantasy in which the familiar becomes strange in front of the inquisitive eye of the camera” (63). I thought this summed up photography perfectly, but it also summed up why I chose my photo. Even though I knew all the people in the photo, they all became strange in that image because I didn’t know them back then. It took me back to a place that was strange, but intoxicating in the sense that I was going to learn something new and exciting about a time period I was not familiar with. I wanted to discover the themes and ideas that could come from a photograph through research and oral history.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. (1980). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New
York: Hill and Wang.
Hacking, Juliet. (2012). Photography: The Whole Story. New York: Prestel
Publishing.
through old photographs in my mom’s photo albums, I saw so many that I had never seen before. Images of my family from generations past that really made me wonder what it was like to live back then. There were pictures of my great-great grandparents and grandpa that I never got to meet that I could tell had stories behind them. We have been talking a lot about photography as a genre in class, and I began to realize that photography can tell a story.
As I continued to look at the photographs, the one that caught my eye was a family photograph from my Mom's side of the family with her Mom and Dad and three siblings. I did not know where they were at or what they were doing, but I wanted to find out.
At first glance this photograph really interested me, which as Roland Barthes would say is the “studium.” Barthes defines studium in his book, Camera
Lucida, as the element in a photograph that makes someone interested in
it. As Barthes states, “The studium is the order of liking, not of loving” (27). I
liked looking at this photograph because it represented something about my
family, and I could tell that there was a story behind it. Studium is also the obvious things within the photograph that the photographer wanted you to see.
Barthes also talks about the piercing element in a photograph, known as punctum, so I began to look for it my photo.
Barthes defines punctum in Camera Lucida as the element, “which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me” (26). There were a lot of interesting elements in the photograph of my family, but I found it harder to find the thing that pierced me. For me the punctum was the camera around my uncle’s neck, and while it is only a small detail, it was punctum to me. Since punctum is subjective to the viewer, the thing that pierces one person in a photo might be different for another person. Ultimately, the camera made me wonder why were they not using that one and who was then taking the photograph?
Besides the camera was not the only thing in the photograph that I was left wondering about, but I also wanted to know why so much of the background was in the photograph, instead of a closer shot of my family? Was there a purpose in including a lot of the background or was it unintentionally done? I think that my family actually wanted the background to be captured in the photograph in order to show the viewer where they were at. It seemed to me that this picture was capturing a specific memory, and the place they were at was a major part of it.
After addressing the studium and punctum in my photograph, I definitely wanted to go further into the photograph in order to first find out what was happening in the photograph and what was going on at the place my family was at. Then I realized that I could find out things that went beyond what I could actually see in the photograph such as the time period and what it was like when my Mom and her siblings were growing up. I wanted to know how life was different from then to now and what changes my Mom saw between her generation and mine.
My mom has told my sister and I stories about her when she was growing up, but I was excited to know more. This picture was like a telescope into
the past. In Photography: The Whole Story, edited by Juliet Hacking, Henri Le Secq writes that, “if photography gives the viewer reality then it is an intoxicating one, a world of fantasy in which the familiar becomes strange in front of the inquisitive eye of the camera” (63). I thought this summed up photography perfectly, but it also summed up why I chose my photo. Even though I knew all the people in the photo, they all became strange in that image because I didn’t know them back then. It took me back to a place that was strange, but intoxicating in the sense that I was going to learn something new and exciting about a time period I was not familiar with. I wanted to discover the themes and ideas that could come from a photograph through research and oral history.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. (1980). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New
York: Hill and Wang.
Hacking, Juliet. (2012). Photography: The Whole Story. New York: Prestel
Publishing.