Camera Lucida

I really want to write on Camera Lucida (how is it possible that a so-called elite university course can completely miss out on Barthes?), but as it is, I can't write for love's sake. So I'll just note down this little bit. Barthes writes that the Photograph leads to a peculiar dissociation of consciousness and identity; that when photographed, one instantaneously makes another body, an "image".

"In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art...I do not stop imitating myself, and because of this, each time I am photographed, I invariably suffer from a sensation of inauthenticity..." (Barthes, Camera Lucida)

I like that feeling of inauthencity. The hardened smile, the nervous still pose, the slightly angled head. And that you aren't just being watched by the photographer, or the callous audience, but your picture also passes on through time, by others, unknown hands, faces, the millions and the zeros. You are reduced to an image, but you look, and simultaneously connect and disconnect with that very same "self"/"image" of a photograph. It's you and it's not you.