Review Cultures of Vision: Images, the Media, and the Imaginary
Burnett discusses still photography in the second chapter and in portions of the third. Although the title of the second chapter would make the reader believe that Barthes's Camera Lucida is a primary focus, Burnett notes that his main purpose "is to raise a primary distinction between photograph and image" (32) in order to understand the role of the viewer in the interpretation of images. Burnett seems most fascinated with the "rich discourse arising from the human encounter with images and the creative use made of photographs as they are placeed in different contexts" (33).

In subsequent discussions, Burnett elaborates on his distinction between photograph and image. He considers the role of the polaroid camera, the development of which allowed "everyday life to be transformed into an image without pretense" (35). Burnett then returns to Barthes, to examine the questions that Barthes raises about "the subjective and the discursive spheres within which the experience of viewing images is articulated" (41). He concludes:

[A] photograph is a metacommunication about an event or a person or an pbject. Is is not simply acting in place of, standing for, replacing what it seems to be picturing....A photograph cannot replace what it pictures, but a human subject certainly can image that it does (45).
By chapter's end, Burnett seems to have concluded that "image[s] and photograph[s] must be seen as dramatically different" (56) because photos can be "separated from vision and subjectivity" by placing them in an archive, while images are inextricably linked to a "mental process, the result of an interaction between photographs and viewing subjects. Images operate within the realms of perception and thought, conscious and unconscious, looped in a spiral of relationships that are continuous--a continuum" (53).

Front node of review Burnett on film

Contact the reviewer: slang@siu.edu