photography degree zero reflections on roland barthes’s camera lucida edited by geoffrey batchen The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail
[email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Adobe Garamond Pro and Engravers Gothic by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Photography degree zero : reflections on Roland Barthes’s Camera lucida / edited by Geoffrey Batchen. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01325-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Barthes, Roland, Chambre claire. 2. Photography—Philosophy. 3. Photography, Artistic. 4. Photographic criticism. I. Batchen, Geoffrey. TR642.B3736 2009 770.1—dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cover image: Idris Khan, Every Page . from Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, 2004, digital C-print. Courtesy of Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York. 1 Palinode An Introduction to Photography Degree Zero Geoffrey Batchen “One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: ‘I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.’”1 A first-person anecdote about the wonder induced by an otherwise ordinary photograph: thus begins Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, perhaps the most influential book yet written about the photographic experience.