James Stegall"Roland Barthes in his classic study of photography, Camera Lucida, uses two terms, punctum and studium, to descrube our reactions to photographs.
"The studium can be translated as what the photo represents in aesthetic and intellectual terms, wholly disconnected from our emotional response.
"The punctum can be translated as the wound of the photograph. It's both emotional and individual. The punctum for you might be different from my sense of the punctum in a photograph.
"It's a small detail that wounds us, a bou's crooked teeth in a photograph of smiling boys, a man shading his eyes from the sun in another."
--Robin Hemley, essay Lines that Create Motion, The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre
Camera Lucida : Reflections on Photography used book by Roland Barthes: 9780374532338
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