read: camera lucida
Camera Lucida - Roland Barthes
...Photography is a kind of primitive theater, a kind of Tableau Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead. I read Richard Howard's translation. In Barthes' discussion of photography, he isn't concerned about the art or the perspective of the photographer, but the simplest ability of photographs to wound the viewer, the punctum. The work is underpinned by the recent passing of Barthes' mother at the time of writing and the search for a trace of her life in the photos of her left behind.
Barthes fixates on the haunting quality of photos to guarantee that at one moment, the subject undeniably existed. Before or after that moment, the only certainty is death.
Movies have a direction, promised forward movement; photos are the truth for a second.