The Photograph as Mystery: Theological Language and Ethical Looking in Roland Barthes’sCamera Lucida

Abstract

Throughout Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes appeals to Christian theological language to describe photography—what it is, how it works, and what happens when viewers look at photographs. He uses words like “revelation,” “resurrection,” “ritual,” “grace,” “acheiropoietos,” “transcendence,” and the “soul.” Photographs, Barthes writes, appeal to the “religious substance out of which I am molded.” They function as an “experiential order of proof,” “the proof-according-to-St.-Thomas-seekingto-touch-the-resurrected-Christ” (82). They are like “icons which are kissed in the Greek churches without being seen” (90). Ultimately, Barthes compares looking at photographs to a kind of private meditation practiced by believers in the Middle Ages, what he calls “under-thebreath prayer” (97). Barthes is not alone in his use of theological language to describe photography. Susan Sontag and John Berger, to list just two examples,