Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?
Roland BarthesRead
In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the inevitability of loss and the poignant nature of photographs as reminders of mortality.
Roland Barthes explores the emotional weight of photographs, particularly those of loved ones, emphasizing that they capture moments that are irrevocably tied to the passage of time and the reality that death is a part of life. He likens the act of viewing a photograph to confronting a 'catastrophe' that has already happened, as each image serves as a reminder of absence and loss, forcing us to grapple with the memories and feelings they evoke.
In practice
In a reflective speech about family heritage during a reunion.
Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?
If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other.
The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.
History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor.
The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils.
Better to mock the game than to play and lose.
The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
How seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves.
OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.