Punctum

House Clearance, 9 Meadow Road, 1999

'This second element which will disturb the studium I shall therefore call the punctum; for punctum is also: sting, speck, cut, little hole - and also a cast of the dice. A photograph's punctum is the accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).'

Roland Barthes, 1981, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p27