Dramaturgia fotografii. Między teorią a osobistym doświadczeniem (przypadek Rolanda Barthes’a)

Abstract

The article discusses Roland Barthes’ experience of photography and presents its distinctive dramaturgy, which emerges from the reflections of the author of The Light of Image. It is played out between attempts at a theoretical grasp of the essence of photography and a personal, intimate experience of being photographed, but also of being a spectator looking at various photographs. Barthes places this experience in two basic perspectives. The first is connected with the process of taking photographs and the second with the experience of the spectator. This also includes the experience of photography with one’s own image, which according to the author, is always an experience of oneself as someone else, and the experience of searching for “the truth of photography”, especially important in the context of the photographs of his deceased mother. It is significant in Barthes’s concept that he is talking about traditional photography which had a completely different character and performed different functions to digital images do today. Moreover, as the author notes, Barthes’s theoretical findings would be untenable in relation to digital photography.