Is Roland Barthes dreaming when he writes Camera Lucida? Does he think of his mother every day, or of the mother of whom he dreams every day (he tells us at one point that he only dreams of his mother), or of the mother that he both knew and did not know, saw and did not see, or of the mother that was never herself? Is he haunted by the ruin of all the memories of her that he wished to capture, in the writing of this book, for every day and always? Or by what happens, one day, between photographic technology and the light that helps bring to life a photograph of his mother when she was five years old-a photograph in which he claims to find the truth of the face he loved, and from which he seeks to "derive" all photography? Or * We would like to thank Hal Foster and Benjamin Buchloh for their encouragement and support, and Roger Bellin for his diligent research assistance. A longer version of this essay will appear in Palinodes, a collection of essays on Camera Lucida, edited by Geoffrey Batchen and Doug Nickel, and forthcoming from MIT Press and the Center for Creative Photography.
When my gaze meets yours, I see both your gaze and your eyes, love in fascina-tion-and your eyes are not only seeing but also visible. And since they are visible (things or objects in the world) as much as seeing (at the origin of the world), I could precisely touch them, with my finger, lips, or even eyes, lashes and lids, by approaching you-if I dared come near to you in this way, if I one day dared. -Jacques Derrida, On Touching I desire you. I desire only you. . . . Where are you? I am playing hide and seek with ghosts. But I know I will end up finding you, and the whole world will be newly lit because we love each other, because a chain of illuminations passes through us. -André Breton, Mad LoveTo be on an island inhabited by artificial phantasms was the most insupportable of nightmares; to be in love with one of these images was worse than being in love with a phantasm (perhaps we always have wanted the person we love to have a phantasmatic existence).-Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel