Scope and Contents Barthes distinguishes erotica from pornographic photographs as follows. "The Photograph is unary when it emphatically transforms "reality" without doubling it, without making it vacillate (emphasis is a power of cohesion) : no duality, no indirection, no disturbance. The unary Photograph has every reason to be banal, "unity" of composition being the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of academic) rhetoric: "The subject," says one handbook for amateur photographers, "must be simple, free of useless accessories; this is called the Search for Unity." News photographs are very often unary (the unary photograph is not necessarily tranquil). In these images, no punctum: a certain shock-the literal can traumatize -but no disturbance; the photograph can "shout," not wound. These journalistic photographs are received (all at once) , perceived. I glance through them, I don't recall them; no detail (in some corner) ever interrupts my reading: I am interested in them (as I am interested in the...