ABSTRACT
Barthes’s mother, Henriette Barthes, died on 25 October 1977. The impact of the loss of his mother, with whom he had lived for most of his life, can be registered in almost everything Barthes wrote between the day of her death and his own untimely death less than three years later. Camera Lucida, however, is a book directly about his mother and the impact upon him of her death. In offering what appears to be a theory of the essence of the photographic image, Barthes builds a loving, devastated tribute to the person who was without doubt the greatest object and source of love throughout his life.
