In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes introduces two co-existing elements that frame his interest in photographs. One is the studium, a general enthusiastic commitment almost by training, in a “wide field of unconcerned desire”.
“The studium is an order of liking, not of loving. It mobilizes a half desire, a demi-volition, it is the same sort of vague, slippery, irresponsible interest one takes in the people, the entertainments, the books, the clothes one finds “all right”.
The second element is the punctum, which will punctuate and break the studium.
“This time it is not I who seek it out. It is punctum which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me.”
Punctum is often a small detail that attracts the gaze, whose very presence jolts the viewer out of autopilot into a conscious awakening. A seismic shift right before its impact registers on the Richter. A psychic punch by emotion. Call it satori.
Consider the photograph below:
I have a general studium for flowers as subject matter, which prompted me to take the photo. Leaning in closer, the delicate network of veins on the petals draws me in. How diaphanous this veil of life is. How exquisitely fragile. Can flowers feel pulse? As I trace my gaze along the veins and the curvature of the central petal to the upper edge of the photograph, I see the top of the petal just began to split. I feel the clandestine intimacy of knowing the flower is exactly past its prime, wither and decay will be gradual but inevitable - punctum.
"Taste governs every free - as opposed to rote - human response. Nothing is more decisive.” — Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp
Unlike learned studium which has more consensus, punctum is a matter of taste - a private, involuntary response in the eye of the beholder, and this sense it is not unlike the experience of beauty. In his talk Why Beauty Matters, poet Dana Gioia lays out a framework of what happens when we experience beauty:
The arresting of attention
A thrill of pleasure that’s both physical and mental
A heightened sense of perception of the shape or meaning of things
The moment vanishes
Barthes’ “prick” by punctum both arrests attention and heightens sensation, yet “the reading of the punctum is at once brief and active” - the moment vanishes after satori.
Reflecting on my personal taste in food, art, literature, and style, I realize punctum governs and rationalizes nearly all aesthetic judgement:
Enjoying a good chocolate chip cookie is studium, but an unexpected speck of flaky salt hitting the palette in the last bite? Punctum.
Painting according to plan is studium, and punctum is the exhilarating accidental scar-like slash on the canvas.
Studium permeates Joan Didion’s page-and-a-half long (and rather alarming) account of a doctor's file on a psychiatric patient in The White Album, only for Didion to casually reveal at the very end that she is the patient. Extra punctum.
I also consider my grasp of color and silhouettes in dressing: years of growing up in British school uniforms drilled into me a studium for the tidy restraint of navy cardigans, grey skirts, and black loafers. Uniform is what neutrals are - unoffensive, un-opinionated, mimetic, indifferent - color is the piercing cure. What compelled me to reach for cherry red Carel Kinas to conclude an otherwise nondescript fall/ winter ensemble? Punctum. As
notes, even a touch of red thrives as the pulse to punctuate minimalism. (Anything Leandra wears has punctum in the details.) Shock is in juxtaposing silhouettes and textures too: see tiny satin kitten heels with extra stiff raw denim, the tension and serendipity in Allison Bornstein’s wrong shoe theory - punctum is the final oomph.
A number of other pieces that provoked punctum in me recently:
- ‘s essay, The Most Dangerous Thing in Culture Right Now is Beauty. In it, Gioia highlights how beauty doesn’t require validation by any institution, cannot be manipulated by a corporation, does not need or want any theory or interpretation, and is not mediated through critics. Beauty flourishes in the faces of forces that want to marginalize them; an indie cultural rebellion is underway just like here on Substack, and we’re all part of this movement. This sentence is the final blow of punctum for me:
“Beauty is the closest thing to anarchy and liberation in our public lives.”
Re-reading David Foster Wallace’s This is Water. I recall enjoying the piece back in college with general studium, but this time it pierced me on the commute home after a long work day:
“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism… everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”
Wallace names the secular worship of money, beauty, power, and intelligence as canonical avenues towards freedom, but “the really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad, petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
“It is about simple awareness-awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "‘This is water, this is water.’”
Isn’t punctum also an exercise in seeing meaning in the banalities? To not be young fish swimming around in studium not knowing what water is?
What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. — Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation
As a final piece of punctum amidst everything going on in the world right now, I want to end with the text of Shary Boyle’s Silent Dedication at the 55th Venice Biennale, currently on view in New York at the Museum of Art and Design:
This was a beautiful read and analysis of Barthes! I read Camera Lucida last year for a book review I was working on; it’s a really intimate and inquiring way to approach photography and art, and I loved all the connections you drew to your own work and to broader concepts of beauty
thank you Celine and welcome!! Also I thoroughly enjoyed your 2023 reading list, will definitely pick out titles from there for 2024 x