A Punctum for the Digital Age

Triplets, 1993, Keith Cottingham 

(the figures are digital composites)

Migrant Mother, 1936, Dorothea Lange

In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes asserts that photographs have the power to access a truth that lies beyond the surface of the image. Resistant to symbolization, this truth becomes accessible to the viewer via the punctum. The punctum relies on photography’s indexicality, its intrinsic connection to an original referent, and the unique temporal experience of what Barthes calls the “that has been.” With the advent of digital photography and digital manipulations, the need for an autonomous “original” subject or referent is eradicated. This recent elimination of the autonomous referent destroys the basis for Barthes’s punctum because without an intrinsic link to an original, there cannot be the sensation of “that has been.” How then, does the viewer experience the truth that lies beyond the surface of the image? I argue that the viewer continues to access this truth through the photographic image, but via a different kind of postmodern punctum that is no longer based on the prick of “that has been.” The postmodern punctum is based on the prick of the realization that that has not been. Dorothea Lange’s portrait, Migrant Mother (1936), is a perfect example of the Barthesian punctum in the form of the “that has been,” and Keith Cottingham’s portrait, Triplets (1993) demonstrates the force of the postmodern prick of that has not been. Triplets marks a shift into a postmodern understanding of the subject by creating a subject who is not linked to an “original” or a physical referent, but instead is linked to an idea of fragmentation and hybridity. By destabilizing photography’s relationship to the referent through his construction of the subject, Cottingham reconfigures the traditional Barthesian punctum and restructures the ontological status of the photographic image for the digital age. 

The power of Migrant Mother comes from its connection with an original autonomous subject. It is this connection that supplies the evidentiary force of the image and causes it to be categorized as “documentary.” At the time that this photograph was taken in 1936, the evidentiary force defined the photographic medium. Still, in 1981, Roland Barthes asserts that the noeme of photography and its inimitable feature is “that someone has seen the referent in flesh and blood.” Because of its indexical nature, the photograph functions as evidence and serves as a witness to reality. 

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In the following passage, Barthes describes the punctum in relation to an image of a condemned prisoner:

"The photograph is handsome, as is the boy: that is the stadium. But the punctum is; he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been; I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake. By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the future. What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence" (Barthes, CL). 

The “prick” to which Barthes refers is the punctum. The punctum is based on the unique temporality of the photograph. The experience of temporality in the photograph is based on the overlaying of “this will be” and “this has been.” It is the realization that the photograph represents both of these temporalities at the same time. Both experiences – “this has been” and “this will be” are contingent on photography’s assumed connection with a referent that did actually exist in flesh and blood.

The significance of the punctum is its power to reveal something that cannot be represented in the visual codes of the image. Barthes describes this revelatory function when he writes: “The punctum, then, is a kind of subtle beyond–as if the image launched desire beyond what it permits us to see.” With the punctum we feel a prick of the Lacanian Real come through the image. It is an unconscious and unrepresentable force that exists beyond the surface of the paper. 

If the viewer accesses the “truth behind the image” via the punctum, and the punctum relies on the “that has been” (based on the photograph’s connection to its original referent), then digital composites that do not have an autonomous original referent must have another way to access the truth behind the image. They must have a different kind of punctum that does not rely on a connection to an original and thus, does not rely on the “that has been.” Keith Cottingham’s portrait, Triplets, is a perfect articulation of this alternative type of punctum. 

In Triplets, one figure sits looking directly at the camera, another stands behind, looking with his/her arms hanging stiffly at his/her sides, and the third sits in profile, looking down. The image adopts the visual language of traditional formal portraiture. The subjects appear as if the photographer has directed them into poses appropriate for a formal studio portrait. The three bodies are lit with bright even light as they would be in a portrait studio (the light has the effect of the bright flash bulbs used in commercial studios). The classical black background is reminiscent of the velvet black backdrops used in commercial studios. Cottingham purposefully employs these tropes of conventional studio portraiture in order to make the viewer approach the bodies as if they were traditional subjects who had actually posed in front of the photographer’s camera. By “traditional subject,” I mean the modernist notion of the subject as an autonomous and unique individual. By giving the viewer the initial impression that these bodies actually sat in front of the camera in a traditional portrait studio, Cottingham sets the viewer up for the shock of the realization that her/his preliminary understanding of the photograph is not correct. In doing so, Cottingham lays the groundwork for a new kind of postmodern punctum. 

Cottingham uses the conventional visual tropes of traditional portraiture to destabilize the assumed link between the photograph and an autonomous original/referent by questioning the assumption that an original subject ever existed in the first place. Cottingham destabilizes the notion of the original in two ways. First, he suggests that the subject is not autonomous. He presents the subject as an amalgamation of fragmented and hybrid identities. While the torsos of the bodies appear to be male (but could easily be pre-pubescent female), their faces look female (but could easily be pre-pubescent male), and their hairstyles could be male or female. The bodies are combinations of an imaginary mix of races that could include Latino, Caucasian, Native American, Asian, or any other race that the viewer wishes to project onto the bodies. Cottingham communicates the hybridity of the subject by showing three bodies that are hybrids of both race and gender. This construction of the subject breaks from modernist notions of subjectivity to illustrate an updated postmodern version of the subject. 

Triplets destabilizes the assumed indexicality of the photograph and its traditional link to an original autonomous referent. In Triplets, the “that has been” that is so powerful in Lange’s Migrant Mother does not exist. As opposed to the mother and child in Migrant Mother, Cottingham’s triplets never sat in front of his camera. Where Lange’s Migrant Mother is an indexical trace of a referent that existed in reality and evidence of the photographer having been in the presence of the original, Cottingham’s Triplets is an entirely fictional construction of three bodies that do not have a corresponding referent aside from a fragmented and hybrid imaginary of the postmodern subject. 

Because Triplets rejects the notion of the original and consequently breaks away from the experience of “that has been” that defines the indexical image, it loses its punctum. Without a Barthesian punctum, how does the image access the truth that lies beyond the surface of the image? With his rejection of “that has been,” Cottingham’s Triplets creates a new a-temporal space that allows the viewer to experience that which lies beyond the image in another way. Triplets is a not a record of an original, but it gives the viewer the experience of the un-representability of the postmodern subject. Triplets creates a new kind of punctum that is contingent upon the shock experienced by the viewer upon realizing that that has not been. The shock of the that has not been is not based on a realization of time overlaid within the image, as in Barthes’s punctum. Instead, the postmodern punctum arrives as the shock of the realization of an a-temporal subject. The subject is not embedded in notions of past, present, and future, but instead exists within an a-temporal sphere of hybrid and fragmented identities and existences. Conventional temporal categories no longer apply to the postmodern punctum. 

The viewer initially understands Triplets as a conventional studio portrait; however, it quickly becomes evident that something is not right. That feeling of the “something is not right,” is the prick of the postmodern punctum that allows the Real to flood over the viewer. The postmodern punctum occurs in that instant in which the viewer realizes that what she is looking at has not been. 

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By creating an image that eliminates the traditional evidentiary element of the photograph, Cottingham deconstructs the ontological status of the medium and asserts that photography’s noeme is no longer dependent on its intrinsic relationship with an autonomous original referent, but on its ability to provide access to the Real despite its break with any physical referent. Triplets was made in 1993. Now, sixteen years later, Cottingham’s postmodern punctum continues to be relevant, however, as we become increasingly entrenched in the digital age, the straightforwardness of Cottingham’s break from "that has been" with the oppositional "that has not been" might have become too obvious to provide any insight into the shifting ontological status of the photographic medium in the contemporary moment. With the accessibility of digital technologies, the realization of that has not been may not be as shocking as it was in 1993, thus losing its ability to act as a punctum or a bridge to the Real. If there is a post-postmodern punctum, perhaps it lies beyond the work of Cottingham in the work of younger artists whose work does not fall entirely on the side of the that has been or on the side of the that has not been, but somewhere in an imaginary middle ground.