camera lucida

"show your photographs to someone-- he will immediately show you his: "look, this is my brother; this is me as a child.," etc.; the Photograph is never anything but but an antiphon of "Look," "See," "Here it is"; it points a finger at a certain vis-a-vis, and cannot escape this pure deictic language. this is why, insofar as it is ilicit to speak of a photograph, it seemed to me just as improbably to speak of the Photograph."

- roland barthes, camera lucida