In our last class discussion of Camera Lucida Professor Bergman expatiated upon her favorite segment of the book: "...the punctum is: he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been; I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake. By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the future. What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence. In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like Winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe."

This particular section really made me think. I've always been aware of the inevitability of death. It hasn't bothered me too much and I try not to dwell on it. However, now it has been intertwined with photography and EVERY photo of a person. It's a bit of a chilling thought when you look at photos and think, "He/she is going to die." Photos capture a single moment in time, a moment that you can never have back. They can tell you what happened after the photo was taken,  "This will be and this has been."  The photo that made Barthes realize this was one of a man in a cell sentenced to death. He knew for sure that this man died soon after the photo was taken. However, because of the inevitability of death, this thought comes across with every photo. Regardless of the state of the person, you know what's going to happen eventually (or that it had happened). "In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die" is a particularly powerful statement; a reality that it may be difficult to come to grips with. I sympathize with Barthes when he says "I shudder, like Winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe."