Status Updates From غرفة التظهير

“One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: ‘I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.’ Sometimes I would mention this amazement, but since no one seemed to share it, nor even to understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude)…”

Must have been hard to see the world through the eyes of Barthes. He cannot simply see a photograph. He sees dimensions. He wonders about his reception of it. Why he likes one and not the other. What a photograph signifies, an imperious sign of death, "that has been".

Explicitly. Barthes is not a photographer. All the more worthy to read his thoughts on PHOTOGRAPHIE. About the operator (most interesting to me as an amateur photographer), the referent (least interesting) and the spectator (worthwhile to gauge the reception).
My reactions fluctuate between WTF as I don't have his vocabulary as semiotician and aha moments on illuminating insights and classifications.