" The moment of identification, unlike illumination, does not distinguish photography from other visual images, or even from encounters in the world at large. At work in any personal exchange, identification plays an integral part in the formation of groups. Moreover, it is not just the identification of a subject that is at stake but, often identification with it. The personal and the social position through which the beholder is looking can bring what she or he sees into focus, or distort it beyond recognition. The encounter with an image might seem more one-sided that a meeting with a person, but it, too is susceptible to the slippage between one kind of identification and the other. Whether scholars seek to avoid such slippages in their work, or to confront or exploit them, they disturb the simple relation between representations and subjects, between images and people, between photographs and their referents. Something had to be in front of the camera."
Photography Degree Zero, Reflections on Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida, page 75.
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