It is camera lucida
that we should say
(such was the name of that apparatus,
anterior to Photography,
which permitted drawing an object through a prism,
one eye on the model, the other on the paper);
for, from the eye’s viewpoint,

“the essence of the image
is to be altogether outside,
without intimacy,
and yet
more inaccessible and mysterious
than the thought of the innermost being;
without signification, yet summoning up
the depth of any possible meaning;
unrevealed yet manifest, having
absence-as-presence
which constitutes the lure and the fascination
of the Sirens” (Blanchot).

Camera Lucida Reflections On Photography by Roland Barthes, page 106

I began this post earlier today without sufficient time to complete the thought. Life is like that. Sometimes a task is finished, and sometimes not. I am reminded to give myself the benefit of the doubt and others as well. For the most part everyone does his/her best.

Barthes points to the Camera Lucida, a precursor to the camera, as a beginning of atypical experience, that is an artist simultaneously keeps an eye on the object he/she wishes to draw while directing a pencil or other implement to trace an image upon a two dimensional piece of paper. The image produced does not partake in a three dimensional closeness of the object, but for all of that the similitude without presence lends a mysterious quality. Photographs more so, have cast a spell. The missing “real” seduces us. An image impacts us as if to promise an intensity, a “happiness” that – if we pause to think soberly, nothing in our past experience has ever once delivered. Yes, images are often “better” than what they point to.

Barthes reminds us of Homer’s tale, how Odysseus provides ear protection for his crew, as he orders the men to chain him to the mast, lest he be crazed to disastrous actions upon hearing the Siren’s song as they sailed past. Photography in it’s digital form as well as many other digitized types of contemporary technology cast a spell of profit and “progress” that outstrips our imagination.

Circe’s warning be damned! The United States is determined to sail the ship-of-state, and maybe the entire world as close as possible to the singing Sirens on the rocks.

We wouldn’t want to miss out on a single note!

*Header image: Les sirènes by Marie-Francois Firmin-Girard