Foreword by Charlotte Cotton, independent curator and writer. Rosenthal Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University Lucy Gallun, Associate Curator, Department of Photography, the Museum of Modern Art and Phillip Prodger, Senior Research Scholar, Yale Center for British Art. Odette England invited more than 200 photography-based artists, writers, critics, curators, and historians from around the world to contribute an image and/or text that reflects on Barthes’ unpublished snapshot of his mother.Įssayists in Keeper of the Hearth include Douglas Nickel, Andrea V. It is one of the most famous unseen photographs in the world. Barthes discusses it at length in Camera Lucida, but never reproduces it. This snapshot is known as the Winter Garden photograph.

In it, Barthes describes a treasured snapshot taken in 1898 of Henriette, aged five. Published in 1980, shortly before his death, the book is also a tribute to Barthes’ late mother, Henriette. The second involves an exhibition of these photographs at the Houston Center for Photography from Septemthrough January 10, 2021.Ĭamera Lucida ( La chambre claire), written by French literary theorist Roland Barthes, is arguably one of the most influential books about photography.

The first is a 320-page edited volume of photographs and texts titled Keeper of the Hearth: Picturing Roland Barthes’ Unseen Photograph (ISBN 9789053309377). The project is the creation of the artist and writer Odette England. The Winter Garden photograph project marks the 40th anniversary of the book Camera Lucida in 2020.

Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes