READING ‘STUDIUM’ AND ‘PUNCTUM’ IN STEVE MCCURRY AND RAGHU RAI’S PHOTOGRAPHY

Abstract

1. Introduction Photography is unique art of expression. It is 'picture taking' (Taminiaux 2009:6) process which produces images with accuracy and realism. Photography is structural grammar that deals with trans-linguistic fields of communication. It is performative survey of social structure that takes into account historical retrospectives and documentaries which rolls down from reel of camera. Roland Barthes's analogy of photography is critical discourse on rhetorical moves of images. It demonstrates how images are permissive of investigating intertextuality of cultures embedded in text. The definable meaning of text as decontextualized and anachronistic metaphor also lays embedded existential dimension in process of both production and of meaning processed through text. Photography as a source of emission, channel of transmission, and medium of reception (Barthes 1991:3) suggests codes of which is connotative mode of signification that out rightly searches for postures of being-in-the-World. The structural autonomy of photographic messages expressed through units of representation shift from reality to 'message without code' (Barthes 1991:5). This elucidates composed structures of cultural phenomena compressed in visual representation of language, same photographic image subsumes supplementary message through 'the style of reproduction' (Barthes 1991:5). Roland Barthes's primary focus on 'mathesis singularis' (Barthes 1981a:8) is pure contingency of photographic evidence. It is of maneuvers, effects and transformations which emphasize on rupture and nature of 'third text' (1). Barthes's contribution to analogical tools of photography as 'studium' (Barthes 1981a:26) and 'punctum' (Barthes 1981a:27) in Camera Lucida (2), offers 'coherent structure' (Seitz 1991:55) to normalize and recuperate vicissitudes of reading of images. It associates photography through constellation of signifiers clustering around (Wiseman 1989:138) image. Photography is discourse that is affected by 'amused consciousness' (Barthes 1981a:11) of 'docile interest' (Barthes 1981a:40). It is awakened by 'passive, negative, interrogative and emphatic transformations' (Barthes 1981a:40). The concept of studium and punctum in Camera Lucida culminates from both 'concept and tone' (Shawcross 1997:xi). Roland Barthes's analogical and political considerations of images are proffered by Lacan's l'imaginaire which is associated by analogy between images. The image-repertoire is register where subject adheres to an image in movement of identification that relies in particular on coalescence of signifier and signified (1081:209). Diana Knight writes: Barthes explores this hypothesis via figure which appears with increasing frequency in his later work, tel (just so) that will eventually pinpoint intractable photographic referent of La Chambre Claire: absolute Individuality, sovereign contingency, dull to point of stupidity, just So [le Tel] (that particular photo and not photos in general), in short, Touche', Occasion, Encounter, The Real, untiringly expressed (1984:834). Jonathan Culler suggests photography as 'a sign system', and is avowed by its 'exceptional power of denotation' (Culler 2002:21). Roland Barthes's photographic analog is precisely juncture of 'aesthetics of surplussage' (Aciman 1984-1985:110) that baffles meaning with erotic texture. It's slight, gentle, cautious, apologetic voice, touch nonchalant, which doesn't hang fire, not at all, but which advances in tiny bursts, in tiny scintillations, in tiny nibbles of writing (Guibert: 1984:115). According to Carol Mavor, Camera Lucida is physical embracement and philosophical study of Barthes's cherished concept of le neuter (Mavor 2011:219). The distinction between studium and punctum is the order of liking, not loving (Barthes 1981a:27). …