What stood out to me the most in Roland Barthes Camera Lucida was his discussion about the dissociation of consciousness from identity that occurs in photography. It is so common for everyone to pose for pictures (often in the same way) that I do see how we are taking away the spontaneity and authenticity of the photograph by putting on a mask that imitates ourselves or becoming the version of ourselves that we think is worthy to capture on camera. I think this also relates back to the concept of a photo creating an “adventure” like Barthes mentions, in the sense that photos are not animated themselves yet they create a reaction that animates the viewer. When pictures are more staged or fabricated, this feeling fades as we are not as curious to figure out the intricacies of has been captured.

Interestingly, in Jochen Gerz’s work, text is being used to clarify and provide more direction to the story being told from the image. It is not an obvious connection though, the text is subtle and a bit hard to understand. I feel like we automatically expect the text combined with an image to be an explanation or almost clarification of what we are seeing, like the descriptions of paintings in a museum. However, Gerz’s work is not trying to do that; the text and image are almost separate entities that each contribute some originality and artistic expression in different ways.