Against Barthes: The Eye and the Index

by Joan Fontcuberta

The gesture of pointing is the perfect embodiment of photography’s function as a visual document: an injunction to look at this. In this textual and visual essay, artist Joan Fontcuberta takes the index finger as his point of departure for an insightful and irreverent consideration of photography’s relation to indexicality. He refutes, as well as draws on, Roland Barthes’s suggestion that every photograph tells us ‘this has been’ (‘ça a été’), reckoning with the inconvenient multiplicity of thises in any given image. If a photograph constitutes such a statement – as made explicit in images that include a pointing finger – does the camera witness reality or performance? These existential issues are further complicated by the emergence of post-photography and generative AI.

In this typically engaging and iconoclastic essay, Fontcuberta destabilises our ideas about the authority and authoriality of images, drawing on psychoanalysis, semiotics, and his own autobiography. His text is interleaved between two compelling visual essays formed of images from the archive of Mexican tabloid Alerta from the 1960s to 1980s, in which the pointing index finger forms a haunting and often humorous through-line.

Genres: Photography, Philosophy

208 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2025

Reviews

[Dylan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s some things I agree with and some that I don’t. He tries to pull together too many stings in such little writing, more than I personally prefer and doesn’t feel like he fully expresses his point. Much of the concepts Fontcuberta discusses are relatively simple once you look under the flowery writing often leading me to think, “yes, and?” and never receiving the depth I was seeking.

Two stars feels harsh for this novel yet three feels too strong. I would say two and a half stars would be more appropriate but that is not an option.

It is always interesting to see an artist’s perspective on art history rather than that of an art historian, however The Eye and the Index could have benefited from a narrative more rooted in art history analysis and formal critique.

[Joshua Chek · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really, really amazing examination, and somewhat refutation of Barthes notion of photography as reference, as illustrated by the indexical nature of the nota roja photographs. I think that the analysis on AI was interesting also, albeit much shorter.