Book club: Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

We are launching a book club, Reading About Photography: meetings where we discuss important books on photography, share impressions and look for ideas for our own work.

The first book is Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Barthes explores the nature of photography and its effect on the viewer, combining personal experience with philosophical analysis. For Barthes, a photograph acts on the emotions and the body, bypassing rational analysis. The book is a study of memory, death and photography’s power to stop time.

For a richer discussion, read the book in advance and note down your thoughts and quotes. Zbirka bookshop gives club members a 10% discount.

Moderated by Yulia Reivakh, photographer and co-founder of the gallery.