download this issue as a PDF

documents. In abandoning this strict critical approach to photographic images, Barthes is embracing the idea
that the referent in a photograph is a direct link to the past, a visual trace of a subject or object ‘that has been’
(Barthes, p. 80). For Barthes, the photograph, unlike text or language, is a medium that is capable of carrying its
referent within itself. In Barthes’ later writings on photography, the referent therefore becomes the essence of
the photograph’s communicability as conventional language becomes redundant. This represents a complete
about-turn in Barthes’ reflections on photography.
In Camera Lucida, then, Barthes is making an ontological claim: if we damage the photograph we damage the
image and its realism, and we thereby destroy the photograph’s essence or meaning. On another level of
abstraction, I am arguing that texts and photographs can also ‘laminate’ each other. They become fused; they
collaborate to produce a single piece of work or artefact; they are mutually supporting; they become associated
with each other; and, as with construction of the paper photograph, they can also trap meanings between them
(like insects in amber). These are the basic premises of lamination as I am defining it. It is intended as a
sociological concept for understanding and analysing the constructions, associations and meanings produced
by photo-text amalgams. With lamination I am reinstating the significance of text in order to reconceptualise
the effects that it can have on the use of photographic images in various contexts. Put simply, I am therefore
using Barthes’ supposedly post-semiotic perspective on photography to re-establish a semiotic relationship
between photographs and texts because, as a metaphor of construction, lamination works as an overall system
or meta-narrative for understanding associations between the two media and the effects that such associations
are capable of producing.
To be clear, I identify a number of processes or stages involved in lamination. These are: exemplary lamination,
substantive lamination, de-lamination, re-lamination, mis-lamination, ironic lamination and meta-lamination.
Lamination refers to any construction in which text(s) and photograph(s) are combined; exemplary lamination
refers to efficient and precise uses of texts and photos, usually involving one photograph and a caption;
substantive lamination refers to extended and multi-layered combinations in which meanings, as they build,
become more complex and manifold; de-lamination refers to the destruction of meaning that occurs when
photos and texts are separated, torn from one another for the use of either in a new context; re-lamination
refers to the reintroduction of texts and photographs in new configurations and contexts; mis-lamination refers
to the gaps that can exist between texts and images and to those situations where textual descriptions and
visual appearances are incompatible; ironic lamination refers to the versatility of both writing and photographs
as media forms with multiple meanings and their use in combination to exploit this versatility. Finally, metalamination
describes a kind of master lamination, an over-arching text or narrative, which is used to compress
and make transparent a number of perspectives under a single perspective. This paper is therefore a metalamination
of Calle’s work.
‘The Sleepers’ as a Lamination
In published versions of The Sleepers, the photo-text sequences usually consist of brief and efficient written
descriptions followed by a number of photographs depicting the participants in Calle’s game at various stages
44