Barthes between mourning and Týche: photography, the real, and the insistent image

Abstract

Roland Barthes is the author of one of the most influential and widely circulated books on photography, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, published posthumously in 1980. Since its release, this book has continued to generate diverse debates between those who regard Barthes as a fertile ground for critical inquiry and those who seek to challenge his theoretical propositions. While the most extensively discussed concept in the book is the establishment of a photographic noeme, the that-has-been, my interest lies in examining two other elements that permeate Barthes’s writing: mourning and Tyché. The experience of mourning, catalyzed by the death of his mother, serves as a key to understanding the author's meditations on photography and its relation to the real, framed through the lens of Tyché, driven by the desire to encounter his mother once more within the photographic image. This insistent image – which we, as readers, are never granted access to – remained physically present to Barthes, within sight and reach on his writing desk, and it underpins his project of rehabilitating the maternal figure: a poignant effort to keep her alive for himself.