ABSTRACT
Roland Barthes includes the heliograph by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in the illustrations to his autobiographical essay on photography of 1980, La Chambre Claire. The picture shows the still life of a table, laid for one person. Seventeen years later the first person was portrayed, accidentally, in a photograph. The accelerated proliferation and popularization of portrait photography and of photography in general did not take place without affecting and transforming people's individual and collective sensual perception. Walter Benjamin’s statement has proven to be very influential and indeed more recent studies on photography tend to theorize this medium within the context of a history of visual perception. The chapter addresses the some questions what is the role of these visual media—and in particular of photography—within the process of transforming life into a work of art, one's own Work of Art?
