I imagine that the essential gesture of the Operator is to surprise something or someone (through the little hole in the camera), and that this gestu… - Roland Barthes

" "

I imagine that the essential gesture of the Operator is to surprise something or someone (through the little hole in the camera), and that this gesture is therefore perfect when it is performed unbeknownst to the subject being photographed. From this gesture derive all photographs whose principle (or better whose alibi) is “shock”; for the photographic “shock” consists less in traumatizing than in revealing what was so well hidden that the actor himself was unaware or unconscious of it.

English
Collect this quote

About Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Roland Gérard Barthes

Limited Time Offer

Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Roland Barthes

"Am I in love? - Yes, since I'm waiting." The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely: I am the one who waits.

To instil into the Established Order the complacent portrayal of its drawbacks has nowadays become a paradoxical but incontrovertible means of exalting it.

PREMIUM FEATURE

Advanced Search Filters

Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.

It is by studium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally (this connotation is present in studium) that I participate in the figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions.

Loading...