What I feel about these photographs derives from an average affect, almost from a certain training. It is studium; whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally that I participate in the figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions. The second element will break, or punctuate, the studium. This time it is not I who seek it out. It is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me. A Latin word exists to designate this wound, this prick, this mark made by a pointed instrument…punctum.
— Roland Barthes said that
punctum
