[Start vent]
If I read another paper that quotes Barthes as the theoretical saviour of photography, I will fair dinkum spew. Why? At the end of the day, when considering the work of photographers from Frank Hurley, who made composites with glass negatives in the late 1800s (etc), to modernists such as Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray with their countless and mindblowing experimentations that blew apart the notion of photography being no more than a mechanised reproduction / truthful depiction of the world, through to the conceptual genius of artists such as Doug and Mike Starn, Mariah Robertson and Marco Breuer, Barthes views are limited in scope and quite frankly, wrong.
In my opinion, if views such as those of Barthes were applied to painting, we would never have seen the art form evolve beyond the Renaissance.
[End vent]
There are some outstanding art critics and theorists whose life work is in the domain of alchemical photography, although they are few and far between.
I don't have a problem with art critics or theorists not having a creative practice themselves. However, it is a concern when broad sweeping statements such as those of Barthes dumb down the brilliance and majestic beauty of highly complex and diverse creative fields (painting, sculpture, photography, whatever). In my opinion, critiques such as these do little more than highlight the lack of knowledge and understanding people have within their field of expertise, which can further be perceived as hanging on to convention in fear of the unknown. I'm a fan of living life myself.