"All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know they are agents of Death. This is the way in which our time assumes Death… For Death must be somewhere in society; if it is no longer (or less intently) in religion, it must be elsewhere; perhaps in this image which produces Death while trying to preserve life. Contemporary with the withdrawal of rites, Photography may correspond to the intrusion, in our modern society, of an symbolic Death, outside of religion, outside of ritual, a kind of abrupt dive into literal Death. Life / Death: the paradigm is reduced to a simple click, the one separating the initial pose from the final print." - Barthes

 

 

 

Barthes described photography as “a tautology, repetition, the French grammatical term future anterior, or simply, ‘That has been.’ According to Barthes, photography is representational of something that has already occurred, “whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.” (Ironstone, “Roland Barthes: Understanding Texts”).

 

 

When we define the Photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that they do not (i)emerge(i), do not (i)leave(i): they are anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies.” ― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography