Roland Barthes
[Writer, critic, and theorist, b. 1915, Cherbourg, d. 1980, Paris.]
The photographic referent [is] not the
optionally real thing to which an image or a sign refers but the
necessarily real thing which has been placed before the lens, without which there would be no photograph.
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The photographer, like an acrobat, must defy the laws of probability or even of possibility; at the limit, he must defy those of the interesting: the photograph becomes surprising when we do not know why it has been taken.
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Formerly, the image illustrated the text (made it clearer); today, the text loads the image, burdening it with a culture, a moral, an imagination.
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The Photograph is violent: not because it shows violent things, but because on each occasion it
fills the sight by force, and because in it nothing can be refused or transformed.
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As Spectator I wanted to explore photography not as a question (a theme) but as a wound.
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Ultimately—or at the limit—in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes.
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I passed beyond the unreality of the thing represented, I entered crazily into the spectacle, into the image, taking into my arms what is dead, what is going to die...
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How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there
beyond? ![](/images/rdquo.gif)