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Question
In contrast to Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “spark of contingency” in
photography, Roland Barthes concept of the punctum restricts our reading of
photography to personal reflections, ignoring wider issues of politics, culture
and history. Do you agree or disagree? Discuss with reference to both writers
and a range of photographs.
Introduction.
To answer this question I must differentiate from liking an image to
understanding the image and the photographer’s intent. Often popular
photographs that hang on the walls of homes do not have any meaning, they
are an aesthetic surface, meant to beautify the room they are in.
Arguments
Barthes refers to punctum as the element in a photograph that pricks or
wounds the viewer. Punctum is not something that generally interests
someone, such as a beautiful sunset or, most currently, a collapsing
building, which might invoke a recollection of 9-11, thus a national
identity. In locating punctum, Barthes wishes to locate only what he
himself could see, not what others saw. Punctum was his way of forging
individuality; it occurs when one least expects it. It is a small, overlooked
detail. “The punctum, then, is a kind of subtle beyond – as if the image
launched desire beyond what it permits us to see…”(C.L 59).

I cannot reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph. It exists only for me. For
you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture, one of the thousand
manifestations of the "ordinary"; it cannot in any way constitute the visible
object of a science; it cannot establish an objectivity, in the positive sense of
the term; at most in would interest your studium: period, clothes, photogeny;
but in it, for you, no wound.) (73).
Benjamin’s aura provokes, in its very ambiguity and multivalence,
Supplementary elaboration and analysis. 1 (Duttlinger,2008)

Richard Misrach

1
Critical use s of the term across the humanities are too widespread to be constructively
summarized within the space available. However, for a general introductory account of the
concept in Benjamin’s writings, see Ferris 1996 and Fürnkäs 2000. In my article, I will limit
myself to such studies that make the term and its role within Benjamin’s writings the focus
of a more detailed, sustained exploration. In particular, various critics have emphasized
Benjamin’s deeply rooted ambivalence toward the aura as a concept which he rejects as
aesthetically as well as politically regressive, while sim ultaneously bemoaning its decline in
modernity (see, for instance, Stoessel 1983 and Hansen 1987); what is widely overlooked, however,
is photography’s crucial role as both showcase and driving force of this ambivalence.
Conclusion.

Key texts (Bibliography)

Camera Lucidia Barthes
Illuminations Benjamin
The Work of Art in the mechanical age
One way street
A (little, short)brief history of photography
Thinking Photography Victor Burgin
Photography After Frank Phillip Gefer
On Photography ( Sontag)
Carolin Duttlinger (2008)
Imaginary Encounters:
Walter Benjamin and the Aura of Photography Poetics Today 29:1 (Spring
2008) DOI 10.1215/03335372-2007-018
© 2008 by Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics

Wells L, (ed) (2003) The photography reader ; London ; New York :

Routledge,