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this field and which I called the punctum I now know rhat there exists anorher punctum (another 'stigmatum'*) than the '‘detali.** This new punctum, which is no longcr of form but of intcnsity, is Time, rhc lacerating emphasis of the nocmc ("that-bas-becn"), its purc rcprcscntation.

In 1865, young Lewis Payne tried to assassinate Secre-tary of State W. H. Seward. Alexandcr Gardncr photo-graphed him in his celi, where he was waiting to be hangcd. The photograph is handsome, as is the boy: that is the studium. But the punctum is: he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been; I ob$crvc with horror an anterior futurę of which death is the stake. By giving mc the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the futurę. What pricks mc is the discovery of this equivalence. In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, likc Winnicotts psychotic patiem, over a catastrophe which has already occuned. Whether or not the subject is already dead, evcry photograph is this catastrophe.

This punctum, morę or less blurrcd bcncath the abun-dance and the disparity of contemporary photographs, is vividly legible in historical photographs: there is always a defcat of Time in them: that is dead and that is going to die. Thesc rwo little girls iooking at a primirivc airplanc above their vil!age (tl>ey are dressed like my mother as a child, rhcy are playing with hoops)—how a!ive they are! Thcy have their whole lives before them; but also they are dead (today), they are then already dead (yesterday). At the limit, there is no need to represent a body in order for me to cxpericncc this vertigo of time defeated. In 1850, August Salzmann phorographed, near Jerusalem, the road to Beith-Lchem (as it was spelled at rhc timc): nothing but stony ground, oIive trees; but three tenses dizzy my consciousness: my present, the time of Jesus, and that of the photographer, all this under the instance of "reality"—and no longcr rhrough the elaborations of the text, whether fktional or poetic, which itself is never credible doun to the root.

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Ir is betause each photograph always contains this imperious sign of my futurę death that each one, however attached it seems to be to the cxcitcd world of the living, challengcs each of us, one by one, outside of any generality (but not outside of any transcendence ). Further, photographs, except for an em-barrassed ceremoniał of a few boring evenings, are looked at when one is alone. I am uncomfortable during the pri-vatc projeerion of a film (not enough of a public, not enough anonymity), but I need to be alone with the photographs I am looking at. Toward the end of the Middlc Ages, certain bclievcrs substituted for collectxve reading or co!lecrive prayer an individual, under-the-breath prayer, interiorized and mcditative (devotio moderna). Such, it seems to me, is the regime of spectatio. The rcad-ing of public photographs is always, at bortom, a privatc reading. 'lhis is obvious tor old ( historicaD photo-