This paper was written for the Doing Photography conference at Durham University, UK, in 2013.
Foundations of Visual Literacy: Historic Preservation and Image Management
Site/Sight as Text: Barthes and Zero Degree Architecture
Photographs are artifacts of moments past and forever lost. They provide a “fugitive testimony” to history (Camera Lucida 93). Throughout his work, Roland Barthes examines photography’s mnemonic features that testify to the absence of the subject depicted while simultaneously giving evidence that it existed. Barthes regards architecture as a visible index to the past and explains that ancient societies built structures to immortalize themselves.