Comments on Barthes
Barthes’s investigations of the true nature of photography were really interesting, as I realized that I never thought really hard about what it is outside of pure content and composition. The notion that photos resurrect the dead feels like it comes very directly from the fact that he wrote this after his mother died, but in a way it is interesting to think that there really is no other method we have for purely capturing a moment visually, which is a major part of the experience of being in that moment. I enjoy how he immediately dismissed the cinema as well, as there is not the same sense of capturing a moment, and it feels much more pure to analyze the Photograph as an object instead. He starts to establish the semiotic framework around photos, but I’m excited to read the next chapters to see where he takes it.