The book investigates the effects of photography on the spectator .In a deeply personal discussion of the lasting emotional effect of certain photographs, he considers photography as asymbolic, irreducible to the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind. The book develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctumdenoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it.

​

A specific photograph, in effect, is never distinguished form its referent, form what it represents.  camera, in short, were clocks for seeing.

​

There is a principle of adventure that allows me to make photography exist, without adventure, no photograph at all. the word "adventure" implies that figures in within drift between the shores of perception, between sign and image without ever approaching either