Die helle Kammer

Photography is an image without a code, although codes certainly govern its interpretation. It has something tautological about it: a pipe is always a pipe here. Therefore, the semiotician Roland Barthes makes not the science of signs, but the fascination that certain photos exerted on him the guiding principle of his last book (published in 1980). What is this attraction that resonates within me? The characteristic of so-called advanced societies is this: they consume images today and no longer, like earlier societies, belief systems; they are therefore more liberal, less fanatical, but also 'false' (less 'authentic').