Focusing

on a single photographic or screen-based work provide an in

depth analysis of this work using any of the theoretical terms discussed in
the course.
On La Jete and Camera Lucida
By Mahmood Fazal

In Chris Markers short essay-film La Jete, the artist uses the medium to
suggest that memory functions in the same way photography does, and that
those moments we remember, like the traces that are captured in a snapshot, as
being the punctum of our experiences. La Jete unravels as a complex science
fiction narrative composed almost entirely of still shots, this reduction
emphasizes the illusion of film movement and the unreliability of human
perception. Markers method of uniting black and white photography with the
techniques of the cinema develops a language defined by Philippe Dubois as
cinmatogramme,1 which is simply a film that incorporates the rhythm and
editing techniques of the cinema such as tempo, dissolves, fades and zooms into
photography, of which Marker exploits in his techne when sharing his mode of
essay film.

The thematic parallels in the writings of Roland Barthes Camera Lucida with
Markers La Jete are the way in which both works seek to deconstruct the
photograph, specifically in relation to death, time, memory and history. However
there approach to the subject is executed via different methods. Barthes work is
essentially a critical essay explored through a subjective and liberal form in
contrast to the layers of meaning coded in Markers narrative. Markers film opens
with the memory of a man who dies, Barthes essay begins by the author
recalling his amazement whilst he focuses on the eyes of a photograph
depicting Napoleons younger brother. Barthes notes that the photograph is
violent..[because] on each occasion it fills the sight by force, and because nothing
in it can be refused or transformed (p.91) for Barthes the individual photograph
cannot be interpreted because it yields itself wholly to the spectator. If the
photograph is whole within itself and arrests interpretation, then in regards to
film, the narration infers onto the photographs our understanding of the subject,
in the same way Barthes subjective narrative infers itself on the photographs he
recalls. 2

Both of these types of inferences, whether it be a subjective inference the
spectator brings to the photograph or a narrative guidance that positions the
spectator relative to the subject, they both seek to solve the mystery of the
photograph. Marker uses his narrative to explore this through his play on time,
and the way in which he uses the same photographs for moments in the past,
present and future, to provide the spectator with a history and trace to each
moment. Barthes is similarly aware when he looks at Kerteszs portrait of a
young schoolboy, which he asks is it possible that Ernest, a schoolboy
photographed in 1931 by Kertesz, is still alive today (but where? How? What a
Novel! (p.83) Barthes projects the possibilities of the image by looking at the

1 Chris Marker, Memories of the Future
2 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

future of the photographed subject, rather than its history, an intrigue that
compels him, wants him to seek or resolve the mystery.

If the spectator was to consider the photographs that Marker uses, without the
context of the narrative, most of the photographs contain the same degree of
familiarity that one might find in an old family album, this is with the exception
of the photographs of the experiment which almost feel as though they were
taken as part of Nazi experiments from the second World War. The point being
that the photographs Marker uses similarly to Kertesz photograph of the young
schoolboy, offer the same possibilities. This combination of a fantastic story with
a series of photographs that seem accessible, ordinary or familiar provides the
spectator with the sense that for Marker the photograph may be so forcefully
clear, as to yield itself wholly to the object (p.106), that this history through
inference or closure to the mystery that one yearns, can never be true to the
photograph or as true as the photograph, it will always be a story told by a
narrator, as a narrative fiction to the subject.

Perhaps this is why Marker holds back so much information from the spectator,
who is made all the more aware of these gaps because of the narration, like what
the war was about? Who are these characters? What are their names? Which
poses more questions about the photographs one might examine everyday and
the histories from which they amounted, furthermore if we were, as spectators,
provided with these details, a central question will always emerge unanswered,
Who is that person? Or what personifies that person? For Barthes it might be
resolved only in accordance with his own subjective history, these infinite
subjective histories are recalled by a sting in the photograph, that unites us
through memory, a poetic inference.

Barthes notes that the photograph is composed of three practices: to do, to
undergo, to look (p.9). These three processes are involved in the function of the
photograph; the spectator being the viewer, the operator being the one who
captures the photograph and the object which is that thing or moment being
photographed. In Chris Markers work the spectator and the target are obvious,
however the operator remains obscured, typically objectified in classic essayist
form, the voice doesnt simply resonate as Markers, nor is the authorship of the
photographs inherently Markers, perhaps for Marker, by implementing this
method he opens up the form so that it can resonate these ideas surrounding the
medium itself.

Barthes Winter Garden photograph, of his mother as a child, is used by the
author in order to explore this connection between memory and the photograph,
and within which he reveals the photographs amazing power of being able to
capture the air of a person. The image from Markers work that runs parallel to
this idea is the image of the woman on the jetty, who is, for the hero, the only
peacetime image to survive the war, and is the only thing that he loves or
provides him with hope. This image functions simultaneously as a photograph
for the spectator and a memory within the narrative. However, as a spectator the
image seems staged, overly expressive almost an illusion or deception
contructed by the imagination, the womans gesture, her hair blowing in the

wind, her fingers frozen across her mouth. It is the first and subsequently the last
time we see her face, Marker imposes the question; do we remember this way?
The image is ingrained on the screen for several seconds, the narrator asks Had
he really seen itor had he invented that tender moment? For Marker, memory
is photographed by the mind, but edited or deceived by fantasy and romantic
notions that are provoked by the operator. During the heros early time travels
he is bombarded by images; Other images appear, merge, in that museum,
which is, perhaps, his memory.3 If for Marker the museum functions like
memory, a place where ideas are constructed first then displayed and accessed,
then would the nature of the camera and the photograph perhaps function as
counter-memory? The way in which this photographic, stylized photograph
replaces the heros memory would suggest that memory is photographic in the
sense that it is fictionalized and deceived biologically, just as the senses are
deceived by the photographs in a cinema as they pass the eye at 24 frames
revealing motion, so does then the photograph confront memory, countering its
possibilities?4

Barthes Winter Garden and Markers image of the woman on the jetty are not
simply linked by their notions of memory, they both also conjure up the air of
the women depicted in both photographs. In Barthes ritualistic study of the
photographs of his mother, he does not recognize her, the photographs reflect
a likeness but do no embody her being, he writes photography authenticates
the existence of a certain being, I want to discover the being in the photograph
completelyin its essence. Suddenly, he finds her in the Winter Garden
photograph, within which he experiences the power of photography as being
able to capture the air of a person. The air is a kind of intractable supplement
of identitiy[it] expresses the subject (p.92), furthermore, it is through this
quality of the air that Barthes believes a photograph comes alive, a poetic
notion that treats photography more than a supplement to memory or an
archive, the photograph becomes the embodiment of his relationship with his
mother. Markers photograph of the woman on the Jetty, sets up an analogous
function for the hero of the film, the spectator can access the air that the
narrator experiences in relation to the woman, through the illusion set up by the
photograph.

This opening up of a connection with the photograph, that utilizes both
imagination and memory with that being photographed, can be contrasted with
the subject of death, the taking away. Barthes notes that within every
photograph there is a terrible thing, which is the return of the dead. For
Barthes, the photograph cannot escape mimicking death, every photograph is at
its heart an image of death. Every photograph essentially depicts a moment
passed, never to be repeated. For Barthes, this idea is tied up with time, which in
his words is engorged [in the photograph], one that records and certifies
something that has been (p.76). He argues that It is the advent of the
photographwhich divides the history of the world, the notion that prior to the
photograph nothing about the times were certain, perhaps divided by memories

3 Chris Marker, La Jete
4 Paul Meyer, Restoration of Motion Picture Film

and illusion. Both history and art coexisted to teach people about the past, but
nothing was a certain, an interpretation of facts, fictionalized by human
intermediaries. Language in a sense combines signs, some of which only have an
allusion in relation to their referent, the photograph however has indexicality as
a necessary feature, a trace which is linked directly to the thing [that] has been
there (p.76). We might consider history as being like a narrative, a story about
the past told through the experiences of people who were better at articulating
themselves, while painting and other arts are representations of these
experiences.5 Photography however, proves with certainty, it may pose further
questions as discussed before, but from a phenomenological viewpoint, in the
Photograph, the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation
(pg. 89). Barthes knows that only the existence of something can be proven,
however this proof of authenticity, proof of time, is ironic in the sense that it
affirms these moments, proves or authenticates but simultaneously resonates as
a symbol of death. Furthermore, as the photographer captures a portrait of an
individual in order to celebrate or commemorate their persona, the photograph
may reduce their air into superficiality, transforming people into objects of art,
a spectacle. This idea resonates particularly with celebrity culture in the age of
information, we are assaulted by the public photographs of other peoples lives,
superficial lives that become spectacles that we consider in reflection with our
own experiences and memories. It is this photographic function that for Barthes
has transformed subject into object, as somewhat of a celebrity himself he
notes I have become Total Image, which is to say, Death in personothers do
not dispossess me of myself, they turn me ferociously, into an object (p.14). In
contrast, Laura Mulvey in her book Death 24 x a Second notes that both
photography and film are associated with the capability to overcome death, the
way in which photography freezes moments and saves the objects from their
ultimate faith, death. One might argue that this paused reproduction, this
archive, represents a symbol of life as being eternal or immortal.6

Marker enforces similar ideas to Barthes about death within the narrative of La
Jete, a dead man travels back in time to a world of people who are about to die,
sent by a group of scientists who have turned him into an object and before
whom he has no private life, he is to be used and discarded, the film is essentially
about dead people, killing in the third World War, trying to escape death, just as
we perhaps attempt to escape death and make eternal the objects of our
photographs. When Marker sends his character into the future, the inhabitants
reflect Barthes ideas of the spectator, they are viewing him as a photograph of
the past. Furthermore, the hero and heroine meet in a museum filled with
eternal creatures reinstating the marriage between death and time, a museum
of geology, creatures that have been long dead are put on display in an attempt
to recapture their life and thus create a memory of them, just as Barthes
describes in the photographic process. Marker recycles these statues through
photography and incorporates them in his narrative, effectively removing them
from time entirely. Marker uses his story or narrative as a tool, a tool that
negates time and places the spectator within the fiction of the story where real

5 Timothy Quigley, Notes on Roland Barthes
6 Laura Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second

time is irrelevant.7 The hero, like the photograph, is turned into an object, used
by scientists in the name of the race in the same way the press exploits in the
name of culture. Markers hero has no private life, the thought police see even
into dreams. Barthes writes, the age of the photograph corresponds precisely
to the explosion of the private into the public. (pg. 98) At the end of La Jete the
man is killed because he is no longer useful, for which Barthes notes, The only
way that I can transform the photograph is into refuse: either the drawer or the
wastebasket (p.93).

Finally I will be addressing Barthes most important idea in Camera Lucida, that
of the punctum, that striking detail of a photograph that pricks or stings the
spectator, a photographs punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also
bruises me, is poignant to me) (pg. 47). Not all photographs might necessarily
have a punctum, nor might the punctum be the same for every spectator viewing
it, however when the punctum is there the picture suddenly becomes alive for
the viewer. For Barthes, the punctum is a necessary quality or detail that brings
the photograph to life for the spectator via their subjective inference,
experiences or memories. In La Jete, the spectators immediate response would
be the moment in which Marker uses the tempo of his rhythmic editing to build
into the one moment of film in which there is movement, when the heroine is
depicted through photographs that fade into one another slowly creating the
illusion of movement until the point in which the eye is deceived, when we are
viewing motion through the illusion of film at 24 frames per second, we can hear
her breathe, she confronts our gaze, blinks and fades to black. It is striking for
the spectator to consider why Marker chooses to use motion here, even if its
slightly jagged and brief, is it perhaps because this is the only moment in which
he has revealed a memory that is certain, less staged, a natural moment that
resonates for the hero? A memory that Marker imposes on his spectators
through a cinematic technique? perhaps its to be considered subjectively in
accordance with our memories of past lovers and friends, and the way in which
we remember them. Or Marker might suggest that memory functions in the same
way the photographic process does, and that those moments we remember or
make memories of, that the pricks and stings of a snapshot, are essentially
the punctums of our past.

Both Roland Barthes and Chris Marker use their works Camera Lucida and La
Jete in order to deconstruct and examine the nature of photography and the
impact, the photograph has on the observer. Together they address time, death
and memory, whilst examining its effect in relation to the observer as objective
and subjective. If we were to consider these ideas in contrast to Kafkas, when he
explains, we photograph things in order to drive them out of our mindsa way
of shutting [ones] eyes (pg. 53) the act of taking photographs, or continuing to
live and construct ordinary experience and memories, become a temporary relief
from the sting of the punctum, which come from the notion that what the
Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once (p.4) despite the
blind field of life surrounding it. In conclusion, it is only with an absence that
art can elevate, and by the time it catches up, the moment has passed as we

7 Uriel Orlow, Photography as Cinema

create new punctums in ordinary life, in the hope that we may recall them again
in the photographs we find or capture in the future.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Chris Marker, Memories of the Future, Theoreme, no 6, Reseaches sur

Chris Marker, 2002, pg 9-45
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard
Howard [New York: Hill and Wang, 1981], pg 53.
Chris Marker, La Jete, 1962. (New York: Zone Books, 1996).
Paul Meyer, Gamma Group, Restoration of motion picture film.
Conservation and Museology. Butterworth-Heinemann. 2000, pp. 2426.
Timothy Quigley, Notes on Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Last modified
Feb 25, 2012. Accessed June 1, 2014.
http://timothyquigley.net/vcs/barthes-cl2.pdf
Uriel Orlow, Photography as Cinema: La Jete and the Redemptive Powers
of the Image. Creative Camera 359 (1999): 14-17.
Laura Mulvey, Death 24x a Second; Stillness and the Moving Image.
Reaktion Books, 2009.