La Chambre claire: Note sur la photographie, 1980;Camera
Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by
Richard Howard. 1981
‘‘L’Image’’ (‘‘Image’’). InL’Obvie et l’obtus: Essais critiques
III. (1982): 9–61;The Responsibility of Forms: Critical
Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. Translated by
Richard Howard. 1985: 3–62
Further Reading
Barthes apre`s Barthes: une actualite ́en questions: actes du
Colloque international de Pau, 22-24 novembre 1990
(Barthes after Barthes: Current Issues, Acts of the Pau
International Conference, 22-24 November 1990). Pau,
France: Publications de l’universite ́de Pau, 1993.
Knight, Diana, ed.Critical Essays on Roland Barthes. New
York: G.K. Hall, 2000.
Rabate ́, Jean-Michel, ed.Writing the Image after Roland
Barthes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1997.
Rylance, Rick. Roland Barthes. New York: Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Shawcross, Nancy M.Roland Barthes on Photography: The
Critical Tradition in Perspective. Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 1997.
Stafford, Andy.Roland Barthes, Phenomenon and Myth: An
Intellectual Biography. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univer-
sity Press, 1998.BAUHAUS
The Bauhaus, founded and directed by architect
Walter Gropius, is renowned as the landmark Ger-
man modernist school of the early twentieth century
in which the integration of the arts and design with
technology was first explored and practiced. The
school was composed of workshops in painting,
furniture design, typography, and other fine and
practical arts courses, each taught by a master.
Each Bauhaus student commenced hands-on train-
ing with a study of the elements of design common to
all modern design endeavors. Established in 1919
and arising out of the combining of two pre-existing
schools, the Weimar Art Academy and the Weimar
Arts and Crafts School, in Gropius’ words the Bau-
haus, strove for ‘‘unity in diversity’’ in function,
design, and thought and reflected the influence of
the Werkbund movement on its founder.
The Werkbund called for integration among the
arts and the economic realities of capitalism, and
looked favorably upon emerging technologies of the
earlytwentiethcenturytoassistthisaim.TheBauhaus
was a surprising success at what mightseem a utopian
aim. Best known for producing well-designed yet
practical furniture, household items, including dish-
wareandcutlery,graphicarts,typography,andtrain-
ing teachers, in the area of photography the Bauhaus
had a profound and lasting impact.
In the strict sense, photography as an independent
medium came rather late to the Bauhaus. It was not
introduced into the curriculum of the school until
1929, four years after the establishment of the Des-
sau Bauhaus (1925–1933) and a full decade after the
earlier Weimar school (1919–1925). La ́szlo ́Moholy-
Nagy, the multi-talented abstract artist and the mas-
ter of the design foundation course, was the first to
recognize the value of photography not only to
document the Bauhaus, but as an independent art
form. His modern teachings validated the signifi-
cance of the photograph for generations of Bauhaus
students, from Germany to America, first in his
teaching, and later via his directorship of the New
Bauhaus in Chicago (1936–1938). Number 8 of the
famousBauhausbucherseries,Painting,Photography,
Film, by Moholy-Nagy, is devoted to this medium.
Bauhaus photography tends toward the artisti-
cally self-referential: Bauhaus photographers pho-
tographed Bauhaus buildings, Bauhaus designs,
and Bauhaus personages, including fellow Bauhaus
photographers. Though Walter Gropius and the
Bauhaus masters repeatedly denied the existence
of any ‘‘Bauhaus style,’’ Bauhaus photographers
nonetheless invented and shared an experimental
method that today is readily identifiable. The hall-
mark of Bauhaus photography and its aesthetic
strength is in its abstract qualities.Intensecontrasts
of blacks and whites, or strongly cast shadows in
shades of gray, predominate. The compositions are
most often structured by geometry, either the hori-
zontals and verticals of Cubism or De Stijl, or else
slashed through via the raking diagonals of Futur-BAUHAUS