Studium/Punctum
Following on an in-depth discussion of a section from Camera Lucida last week, I find myself using Barthes’s framework to deal with a photograph I was looking at today by Carl De Souza. The fragment displayed above represents what for me became the “studium” of the image. Just what was “Artisan Fine Art” selling in downtown London? The naming of the shop was a bit curious to me, and I wasn’t aware of any gallery by that name—in this country “artisan” is connected with craftsmanship, not with fine art. The name seemed to be oxymoronic. The mass of cameras in the image seemed incidental and commonplace, a scene that is easily repeated a thousand times an hour around the globe. The detail on a building drew me in more than the spectacle. It provides a good excuse to differentiate other details below the fold.
