Invisible Punctums

What is punctum? It’s defined as “a small, distinct point.” Barthes uses it to refer to an incidental but personally poignant detail in a photograph that “pierces” or “pricks” a particular viewer, constituting a private meaning unrelated to any cultural code. The punctum points to those features of a photograph that seem to produce or convey a meaning without invoking any recognizable symbolic system. This kind of meaning is unique to the response of the individual viewer of the image.

These are really important ideas to me. As I study my photographs for this work, I find myself employing them as much as I can. Especially punctum. This unspeakable “something personal” that can’t be defined with words is really the essence of any good photograph. If you try to describe it with words, it goes away. I know it may seem antithetical to my position on the importance of narrative, but it’s really not. In fact, it supports the narrative idea fully and wholeheartedly. If the image is well-made and reinforces the story, the punctum will fully support it, even taking it to a new level. Bathes said. “However lightning-like it may be, the punctum has, more or less potentially, a power of expansion.” This is exactly what I’m after. The expansion. This idea transcends photography in a way.

The ultimate effect of punctum is the intimation of death. This is something Barthes realizes in the personal context of his bereavement over the still recent death of his mother. Looking at a portrait of her as a young girl (a picture called “The Winter Garden" that he declined to reproduce in “Camera Lucida”), he sees that her death implies his own. This is death awareness, or consciousness of death. Photography has the power to remind human beings that they will not be alive forever. In fact, you never know when your time is up. It could be today or in 50 years. We never know, but we should bring it from the unconscious to the conscious. If we did that, our world would be a much better place for everyone.