punctum.photo
What is this
Every photograph has a place where it works. Not the subject, not the composition — a detail that catches, that you didn't choose to look at. Barthes called it the punctum: the accident that pricks.
Punctum shows one photograph at a time, with nothing around it. You touch the place that pricked you, or you move on. That's all. There are no likes, no comments, no followers. Only where people looked.
When enough people have touched, the photograph develops: a map of every prick, soft, like breath on glass. The photographer sees where the image worked — and where it simply passed.
How it works
One photograph. Touch what pricks you, or move on.
After you touch, you see your point. Once the photograph has twenty touches, you also see where others touched before you.
If you want, leave one word. Or don't.
The next photograph is chosen by chance, never by what you did before.
That's it.
In Chance, you choose one of your photographs; the second chooses its neighbour, and the two stay together.
The Salon
Once a month there is a Salon. The first is for the refused: the photographs a jury, an editor, a client, or an algorithm turned down. Send the one you still believe in. It goes in blind, in random order, next to Atget. The audience won't vote. They'll look. When the Salon closes, every entry hangs with its map, in no particular order, with no winner.
Privacy
Guests need no account and get no cookies. This browser remembers your light or dark choice and, for this tab, which photographs you have already seen. For each touch we keep the photograph, the point or the pass, the time, whether you are a photographer or a guest, your country as the hosting provider reports it, whether you are on a phone or a large screen, your theme, and the word if you left one. We store no names and no IP addresses in those records. Invited photographers have an account and a sign-in cookie. Fonts are served from this site. The only outside script is Cloudflare's cookieless analytics, which counts visits and keeps no personal data.
Money
Punctum is free while it is small. A paid darkroom for photographers will come later; prices will be published before it exists. There will never be ads.
Uploading
Uploading is by invitation. Write to hello@punctum.photo with a link to your work.
Flagging
If a photograph is wrongly attributed or should not be here, use the flag link after you touch. We look at every flag.
Signature
Made by Boško Radulović, photographer, Belgrade. Darkroom, Barthes, and a suspicion that the like button has taught us to look at the wrong things.