Roland Barthes, La Chambre claire: note sur la photographie [Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography]

Graham Allen (University College Cork)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (Universidad de Antioquia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1980

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Commentary / Criticism (literary)

Resources

La Chambre claire, published in English as Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (trans. Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), is the last book by Barthes to be published during his lifetime. At once a theoretical examination of the nature of photography, Camera Lucida is also a highly personal work of mourning. Barthes's mother, Henriette Barthes, died on October 25^th 1977, and Barthes, who had lived with her for most of his life, lost his only permanent source of love. The work of mourning is a central feature of Camera Lucida and so cannot be missed by its readers. It should also be remembered, however, that as a gay man, the death of his mother (his father died before Barthes was a…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2502 words

Citation: Allen, Graham. "La Chambre claire: note sur la photographie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 September 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10352, accessed 04 December 2024.]

Save this article