Camera Lucida

My advice to anyone who wants to read this book is to look up the “Concerning Language” sketch from the show A Bit of Fry and Laurie and every time Barthes gets extremely up his own ass, read it aloud in the rhythm and tone of Fry's performance in that sketch.

There are a lot on really interesting ideas in here, especially as relate to our extremely image saturated culture. But you have to understand that Barthes is going to spend so much time talking about how he “just doesn't get Photography” that you will want to throw your book across the room and exclaim “THEN WHY DID YOU WRITE A BOOK ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY.” That's normal. That's natural. If you can, push on. He'll get somewhere in the end.