Pub 2006 128 in Vintage Books This personal. wide-ranging. and of the contemplative volume - and the last book Barthes published - finds the author applying his influential perceptiveness and associative insight of the to the subject of photography. To this end. several black-and-white photos (by the likes of Avedon. Clifford. Hine. Mapplethorpe. Nadar. Van Der Zee. and so forth) are reprinted throughout the text.