Benjamin, Barthes, and the Singularity of Photography

Benjamin, Barthes and the Singularity of Photography compares two of the twentieth century's most important intellectual figures from a new perspective. While exploring previously unexamined dimensions of Benjamin’s and Barthes’ relationship with photography, it also offers new interpretations of familiar texts and analyzes sources that have only recently been uncovered. It argues that, despite the different historical, philosophical and cultural contexts of their work, Benjamin and Barthes were concerned with similar issues and problems specific to photography – including the dynamic connection between time, subjectivity, memory and loss, as well as the relationship between photography and its viewer as a form of confrontation between the self and the other. Both authors emphasize the "singular event" of photographic perception and its ethical, existential dimensions arising from the power and sharpness of photographic images. This book, which matches the complex relationship between the history and theory of photography, cultural criticism, and autobiography, will be of great interest not only to historians and photography theorists, but also to academics working in literary and cultural studies.

This book, which meticulously traces the network of connections between Benjamin's and Barthes' visions of the interaction between photography and its viewer, presents an invaluable example of criticism. Kathrin Yacavone's work is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in the phenomenology of photography or who has felt the singular impact of a photographic image.

- Michael Sheringham, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature, All Souls College, Oxford University

This book, a comparative examination of Benjamin's and Barthes' work on photography, is a first! It directly addresses the ethical phenomenon involved in the production and reading of photographs.

- Elizabeth Stewart, Department of English Language and Literature, Yeshiva University, New York

Kathryn Yacavone teaches in the Department of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.