It Is All Temporary

Your name in a telephone directory. Beautiful young women being photographed for a living. It is all temporary. It all changes.

Barthes' Camera Lucida develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it.

The studium category is really quite wide. The punctum category, on the other hand, is by contrast exclusively about emotional reaction. Related particularly to portraiture, the ultimate effect of punctum is the intimation of death. The essence of photography is the implied message: ''That has been.''