Punctum Studium - A tribute to Roland Barthes and “Camera Lucida”

Punctum Studium - A tribute to Roland Barthes and his book “Camera Lucida” “Studium operates in the arena of liking, while Punctum operated in the arena of loving” Studuim & Punctum Studium: Studuim, which doesn’t mean (at least not immediately) study, is a Latin word which means; 1 an application to a thing, 2 taste for someone, 3 a kind of general, enthusiastic commitment And of course, without any special acuity. To recognize the Studium, is inevitably to encounter the photograph’s intentions, to enter into harmony with them, to approve or disapprove of them, but always to understand them or to argue them within self. Punctum: The second element will break (or punctuate) the studium. This time it is not the viewer who seek it out, it is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow. This second element which will disturb the studium, has been called also by Roland Barthes, Punctum, for punctum is also: sting, speck, cut, little hole and also a cast of a dice. The tricky thing is not pointing to, and elaboration on photographs as examples of studium. All photographs can, in fact, be considered as studiums. Definitely the challenge is finding and explaining the arrows Barthes is talking about as punctums, those accidents that pricks and makes small holes in you. Well, the fact that you start looking for punctums at all misses the point. Punctums hit you, so go looking for something that might hit you is moving the scene from punctum to studium. Punctums are also casts of the dice. Who was Roland Barthes! Roland Barthes was a French literary philosopher best known for influencing structuralism, semiotics and anthropology was born on November 12, 1915, he was educated at the Sorbonne, and went on to help establish structuralism as one of the leading intellectual movements of the 20th century. His work made important advances in the areas of semiotics, anthropology and post-structuralism. Influenced by his mother’s death, in October 1977—an event that left him devastated—Barthes wrote his final book, La Chambre Claire (Camera Lucida), discussing photography as a mean of communication, in 1980. Barthes died in Paris in 1980. Born on February 7th, 1972, Reza Eslami is a published Canadian-Iranian architect and poet who captures both in his photography. Since the age of 15, Reza has been actively engaged with drawing, photography and writing poetry and has had two photography exhibitions, one in 1998 and the second on in 2001. Ziba Loghmani is an Iranian-Canadian Urban Planner that was born on November 8th 1972. Her interests in Photography and Psychology directed her to see the objects and spaces around her from a conceptual point of view. She is a screen play writer that had been the student of one of the most famous Iranian photographers and cinema directors, Nasser Taghvaei for more than five years, an honour that she cherishes forever. Nasser Taghvaei’s emphasis on importance of closing a proper frame, gave Ziba a new approach to the world of photography. Queen Gallery