In his 1980 book, Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes introduces two concepts for understanding a photograph: studium and punctum. In this article, I would like to explain my personal interpretation of these ideas and how I apply them to my own photography, and street photography in particular. It is not my intention to summarize Barthes’ book. If you’d like a deep understanding of his ideas, I highly recommend reading it!

Think of this article as a personal digest of that material. I emphasize that my ideas here are very much a mutated interpretation of the original. This is intentional! We should all absorb the philosophical understanding we gain from others and make it useful for ourselves, in our own unique contexts. So, I encourage you to do the same upon reading my short piece on the matter, as well as Barthes’ original deep dive.