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The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

Roland Barthes

I cannot classify the other, for the other is, precisely, Unique, the singular Image which has miraculously come to correspond to the speciality of my desire. The other is the figure of my truth, and cannot be imprisoned in any stereotype (which is the truth of others).
ROLAND BARTHES

Classification Desire Myself Speciality Stereotype Truth Unique
Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things
ROLAND BARTHES

Existence Law Natural Object Silence Society State
Where you are tender, you speak your plural.
ROLAND BARTHES

Fragile Soft Talk Tender Yourself
Every exploration is an appropriation.
ROLAND BARTHES

Appropriate Exploration
We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.
ROLAND BARTHES

Common Deep Intelligence Known Name Philosophy Sense War
As Spectator I wanted to explore photography not as a question (a theme) but as a wound.
ROLAND BARTHES

Exploration Myself Photography Question Wound
Why is it better to last than to burn?
ROLAND BARTHES

Better Burn Last Myself
Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision.
ROLAND BARTHES

Age Experience Old Specific Vision
If I had to create a god, I would lend him a “slow understanding”: a kind of drip-by-drip understanding of problems. People who understand quickly frighten me.
ROLAND BARTHES

Creation Fear God Problem Scare Slow Understand Understanding
Those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere.
ROLAND BARTHES

Failure Obligation Reading Story
Cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood.
ROLAND BARTHES

Camera Living Myself Old Photography Sound
Language is never innocent.
ROLAND BARTHES

Innocent Language One Liner
It must always be considered as though spoken by a character in a novel
ROLAND BARTHES

Character Consider Myself Novel
Isn’t desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn’t the object always absent? -This isn’t the same languor: there are two words: Pothos, desire for the absent being, and Himéros, the more burning desire for the present being.
ROLAND BARTHES

Absence Burning Desire Object Present
In an initial period, Photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs. The ‘anything whatever’ then becomes the sophisticated acme of value.
ROLAND BARTHES

Notable Order Photography Sophistication Value
I love you is unsubtle. It removes explanations, facilities, degrees, scruples.
ROLAND BARTHES

I Love You Myself Removal

The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

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The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

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