Barthes begins his 1977 book, Camera Lucida, by noting one of the symptoms of photography which renders it unclassifiable: “The photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially”. This is because the essence of a photograph is the event and that event shall never recur. The essence of the photograph is the event, “that which is never transcended for the sake of something else”. The photograph can never be distinguished from that which it represents; it is what it is and nothing else. If the photo were to be of a camera data cable, the camera data cable would point at itself in the photo and say “this is me” as opposed to saying “this is a picture of me”.

When an individual looks at a photograph, the photograph is rendered invisible as it is not the photograph that we are looking at. The photograph simply is, and to that extent it is unclassifiable, it resists language. Also, the subject of the photo is “Death in person” and it is has been rendered an object, utterly dispossessed of itself.



