Barthes, two Polaroids and three hostages (part 3).

1. Anything significantly scrutinised is, of course, invested with significance. Perhaps, then, the question to answer at this juncture is to what extent Barthes himself, if any, was involved in the utilisation of Boudinet’s Polaroid – or was it merely chosen by those external to the production (writing) of the text: editors, designers, brand consultants? Is Boudinet’s Polaroid significant to Barthes, significant to his concerns and articulations expressed within Camera Lucida? Does it warrant the scrutiny so far invested – for if the cover is an imposition, one could dismiss excessive readings of its use as little more than exaggeration, a flight of fancy in which the writers quoted above have indulged themselves, constructing more from the paratext than is warranted.

2. In the opening of John Buchan’s 1924 novel The Three Hostages, Dr. Greenwood, disparaging Richard Hannay in his affection for American ‘shockers’, argues that any such story can be construed from a random number of unrelated snippets of information. Pushed on this he provides the following three:

... an old blind woman spinning on the Western highlands, a barn in a Norwegian saeter, and a little curiosity shop in North London kept by a Jew with a dyed beard.

That it is such points that intrigue the reader and which s\he seeks to connect. The trick is that the reader follows the story ‘deductively, while it is written ‘inductively’; the problem is created to suit the solution.

3. It is known that Barthes’ attended the opening of Boudinet’s exhibition in which the image was shown. Diana Knight, referring to a text by Barthes himself, mentions:

... Barthes must have viewed the Boudinet photograph for the first time in the middle of writing Camera Lucida, when he attended the private view described in ‘Deliberation’. (1997. p267)

Indeed, of all the writers quoted [thus far], Knight is the only one to acknowledge this.

4. So I obtain a copy of The Rustle of Language (1989). What can Barthes say about a medium that he disparages? Very little it turns out:

... at the (crumbling) Galerie de l’Impasse, I was disappointed: not by D.B.’s photographs (of windows and blue curtains, taken with a Polaroid camera), but by the chilly atmosphere: W. wasn’t there (probably still in America), nor R. (I was forgetting: they’ve quarrelled). D.S., beautiful and daunting, said to me: “Lovely, aren’t they?” “Yes, very lovely” (but it’s thin, there’s not enough here, I added under my breath) ...after a second quick tour of the room (staring any longer wouldn’t have done any more for me), I took French leave...’(p369)

5. The Polaroid is not discussed at any other point within the book. The photographs that are mentioned are rarely articulated in relation to the specific method of production, but rather as a means by which to illustrate specific investigative frameworks (punctum and studium, for instance), and to the meaning/s personal to Barthes himself. So, then, what is it about the Polaroid that Barthe’s renders irredeemable? For it is from the position of spectator and subject that the book is written - not as a operator, as a photographer:

I possessed only two experiences: that of the observed subject and that of the subject observing... (p10)

6. Perhaps it would be possible to regard the brackets that enclose the writing about the Polaroid on page nine as something that occurred as a revision, something added to the text after Barthes visited the exhibition of Boudinet's exhibition - that Boudinet is the ‘great photographer’?

7. With such a self-imposed limit on the remit of the text, surely the photographic method, the physical manifestation, the print or type of reproduction, should be at least a secondary concern, if not an irrelevancy to Barthes? So what exactly is it that disappoints?