Listening History
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Beerlin, Germany
. Unlike other images, the photograph always points to or shows something,
it is ‘...a weightless transparent envelope’ (p. 5), making it impossible to
distinguish it from what it represents, its ‘referent’ (at least not immediately).
To see the photographic signifier requires a second level of contemplation because
there is something tautological about photographs. The photograph as signifier is
inextricably bound with its referent. Barthes sees photography as belonging to a
class of ‘laminated objects’ that cannot be separated from each other without
destroying both parts.