This was Roland Barthes's last book, combining a selection of photographs with reflections on photography. Examining the themes of presence and absence, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death, the book begins as an investigation into the nature of photographs. Then, as Barthes contemplates a photograph of his mother as a child, it becomes an exposition of his own mind.

About the Author

Roland Barthes was born in 1915 and studied French literarture and classics at the University of Paris. After teaching French at universities in Romania and Egypt, he joined the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted himself to research in sociology and lexicology. He was professor at the College de France until his death in 1980.

Prizes

Beautifully reissued alongside Mythologies

Reviews

Roland Barthes' final book - less a critical essay than a suite of valedictory meditations - is his most beautiful, and most painful Observer Of all his works it is the most accessible in language and the most revealing about the author. And effortlessly, as if in passing, his reflections on photography raise questions and doubts which will permanently affect the vision of the reader Guardian I am moved by the sense of discovery in Camera Lucida, by the glimpse of a return to a lost world New Society