Monday 5 October 2009

Roland Barthes quote

In front of the photograph of my mother as a

child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder,

over a catastrophe which has already occurred.

Whether or not the subject is already dead, every

photograph is this catastrophe.

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida


This quote reveals how a photograph of someone expresses the inevitability of their death. This analysis interests me as I began to think, is it possible to sum up one persons life in a photograph. So as a result you would hold their life in your hands and alleviate the shadow of death out the picture. I realise that as I will be creating a self-portrait it would be impossible to display my future life in the photograph. However, all I can really express anyway are the views of myself from birth to present. So, if I can do this, maybe it wouldn't be so inappropriate to conclude for myself what I believe my future life would be like. Now although this would be 'my life' from the eyes of me at '18', it would still be more informative than one picture.

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