Southworth & Hawes, Unidentified Woman, ca. 1852 (Source: the wonderful Flickr of George Eas

Southworth & Hawes, Unidentified Woman, ca. 1852

(Source: the wonderful Flickr of George Eastman House)

“The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.” 

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections of Photography