The communicology of Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida : reflections on the sign–body experience of visual communication

Abstract

This article contributes both to the conversation about visual communication opened by Roland Barthes’ classic book, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography and current research in communicology (semiotic phenomenology). The article offers an interpretation (third step) to the reduction (second step) of the description (first step) of Barthes’ semiotic phenomenology of communication. Attention is paid to time consciousness, the concept of the punctum, and the interplay between presence and absence opened by it. The interpretation draws on Jean Luc Nancy’s philosophy of visual images in order to expand the discussion of three emergent themes in Camera Lucida: the unseen, exposure, and death. Discussion of these themes from a communicology perspective deepens our understanding of visual communication as a sign–body experience.