Studium and Punctum - Roland Barthes

“What I feel about these photographs derives from an average affect, almost from certain training. I did not know a French word which might account for this kind of human interest, but I believe this exists in Latin; it is studium, which doesn’t mean, or at least immediately “to study,” but application to a thing, taste of someone, a kind of general, enthusiastic commitment, of course, but without special acuity. It is by the studium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally (this connotation is present in studium) that I participate in the figures, the faced, the gestures, the settings, the actions” Chapter 10 pages 25-26

"The studium is the order of liking, not loving; it mobilizes a half desire, a demi-volition; it is the same sort of vague, slippery, irresponsible interest one takes in people, the entertainments, the books, the clothes one finds "all right." To recognize the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographer's intentions, to enter into harmony with them, to approve or disapprove them, but it is always to understand them, to argue them within myself, for culture (from which the studium derives) is a contract arrived at between creators and customers.” Chapter 11, pages 27-28

“For Punctum is also; sting, speck, cut, little hole – and also cast of the dice. A photograph’s punctum is the accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).”

This is basically saying that the studium is something in the image that creates an interest for the viewer. However, the punctum is the point of impact, which is a meaning in the image that may have originally been hidden.

Roland Barthes (1982). Camera Lucida. London: Vintage. 25-28