Extracts From Camera Lucida

Extracts From Camera Lucida

The article Extracts From Camera Lucida speaks about changing your natural ways and posing for the camera once you realize you are being observed and photographed. Barthes quotes “I have been photographed and knew it. Now, once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of ‘posing,’ I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into an image.” I believe this statement to be very true. There has not been one specific time that I would take a photograph of a person and after they realized I was photographing them, they didn’t change their pose. I feel almost as if it is just a natural occurrence to do this when you recognize the fact that you are being observed. Most people become uncomfortable when being observed. One will never be able to tell when one photographed is posed or shot in a voyeuristic manner. As I read about this topic in Barthes’ article, it made me start to think about what was spoken in class last week. One will never be able to tell when one photographed is posed or shot in a voyeuristic manner. Every photograph we observed was a question of truth. I absolutely agree with Barthes’ thoughts about ‘Posing’ and not knowing what is real or not.