When I first read Camera Lucida, I read through it quickly, taking in each point as "elements of photography". However, after discussing it in class and re-reading some of it, I have a completely different perspective of this book.

One part that I'd like to focus on is from page 12, where Barthes says "... 'Myself’ never coincides with my image; for it is the image which is heavy, motionless, stubborn (which is why society sustains it, and 'myself' which is light, divided, dispersed; like a bottle-imp, 'myself' doesn’t hold still, giggling in my jar..."

In class we mentioned that you are never really the person you are in the photograph. Perhaps it is due to posing, as Barthes discusses earlier in the book or because you are split between who you are, whom you want to be, etc. However, there is another reason as well. This reason being because we are always changing.

A photograph has been established as the death of a given moment. That moment will never happen again. That person in the photograph will always be the same person. They are heavy and stubborn. That person cannot be changed. On the other hand you at that exact moment are already different from the person you are now, regardless if it is .5 of a second later. This is because you are constantly thinking. You are light, divided, dispersed, you don’t hold still, etc. 
Understanding this concept made it much easier to understand why we never really know whom we are. When Professor Bergman stated this during our discussion I thought to myself: how can we not possibly not know who we are? I mean we are ourselves, we know our likes, dislikes, we must know ourselves right?

But it is impossible to truly know who you are because once you think you've figured it out, once you have some kind of comprehension of who you are, you've already become someone different. Time is always moving and we are always changing. Every single experience is evidence of this notion.

For example, I sat down to write this blog, with the idea in mind and the tiny note I wrote on page 12. However, my idea is not exactly the same as when I read it. Some of it was lost in the time of me thinking it and me writing it down. Some of it was perhaps added by something I've seen. As I write I begin to think to make new connection.

It is so frightening how unstable we are as people. We are so easily molded by everything we experience. So does that mean there is no truth in the world? Since, once we've established a truth, it has already changed?

Is then the photograph the only thing that remains the same?