fieldnotes #1: photographs, poems, and what ‘pierces’ us

the punctum and reading a poem like an image

Have you ever felt a pang at a stranger’s wedding photograph in the 50p basket of an antique shop? Or welled up at the smiling eyes of someone’s child on Instagram? Then you may have encountered a punctum.

In Camera Lucida (1980), Roland Barthes offers a compelling framework for analysing the photographic image. He distinguishes two main aspects of the photograph: the studium, and the punctum. The ‘studium’ (Latin: ‘study’, ‘pursuit’, ‘devotion’) is the aspect of the image that can be logically deduced by most viewers (its ‘meaning’, broadly speaking, or the photographer’s intentions), while the ‘punctum’ describes a more nuanced characteristic.

‘A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).’

In Latin, ‘punctum’ refers to a pin prick, a puncture, a sting. It is at once something sharp that wounds, and the wound itself. In biology, the ‘punctum’ refers to the opening of a tear duct. I love this resonance. In other words, the punctum is a detail in the image that moves you for a reason that might be outside your awareness.

Barthes explains that the punctum often strikes the viewer unconsciously as a ‘tiny shock, a satori’. ‘Satori’, from Japanese, refers to a kind of awakening. In this way, the punctum of an image can tell you something about what’s going on in your unconscious, possibly bringing something you’ve been repressing into view. Or so the theory goes.

I’ve been thinking about how this idea might translate to poetry. In a poem, the ‘punctum’ (the feature that ‘pierces’ us) may be an image or phrase, but could also be something outside of the language itself. The punctum might be how white space is used. I think immediately of the chasm in Emily Berry’s ‘Aura’, a literal ‘wound’ in the text. But it might be far subtler than that, too—a place where the form falters or the line is broken on a particular word.

What I love about the idea of the punctum is that it acknowledges the self encountering a piece of art. Barthes says that the punctum is ‘what I bring to the photograph and what is nonetheless already there’. We will see a photograph differently depending on our lived experience. Likewise, what moves or ‘pierces’ me in a poem or painting may not ‘pierce’ the next person because our experiences and thus our unconscious associations will be different.

I also really like the emphasis on the importance of our emotions when engaging with art. Post-PhD, it’s a tonic to come back to the simplicity of feeling my way through reading and writing.

In the spirit of that, here are three ways you can use the idea of the punctum when you’re making or reading poems:

Ekphrasis: choose a photograph or painting which ‘wounds’ you in some way and freewrite about the image until the punctum reveals itself. I’ve had really interesting and even therapeutic results from this. Sometimes writing ‘about’ an image allows you to give voice to something you’ve been unable to say. The image often also lends a visual vocabulary for the poem, which is one less job for you to do.

Found poetry: isolate extracts from news articles, transcripts, or other material based on what ‘pricks’ you. Use this to guide your selection of material. What ‘wounds’ you? What ‘points’ do the rest of the words seem to orbit around?

Analysis: when you next read a poem, treat it like an image. Ask yourself, where is the ‘punctum’ for me in this poem? Where is the ‘puncture’? Perhaps this is the line where the meaning drops into focus for you, or where a word has been used that you haven’t heard since your late grandmother said it.

Make note of these highly subjective resonances. I hope they deepen your understanding of your work and/or yourself in some way.

I’d love to know if you’ve found a punctum in your own work, or what unexpectedly ‘pricked’ you in someone else’s!

Little update:

I didn’t think I’d be banging on about Barthes on Substack mere months after handing in my PhD thesis (which featured him a fair whack), but here we are. Last month, my Viva was cancelled for reasons outside of my control, so I thought, how better to continue my revision than through writing a series of mini essays that break down some of my thesis’s key ideas. You’re most welcome, dear reader.

If you’re at all interested in photography, ekphrasis, found poetry, archive, and interrogating the self through creative practice, you might enjoy the essays I have planned over the coming weeks. I’m calling this series ‘fieldnotes’ 1) because these essays are essentially notes from my research, and 2) so that if you’re not at all interested in my research, you can skip any posts with that heading 😊