This longing for a dwelling place, when I look at it closely within myself, is neither dreamlike (I am not dreaming of some exceptional place) nor practical (I am not intending to buy a house according to the landscapes in the real estate agency’s brochure). It carries something of a hallucinatory image, and it arises from a certain hidden vision, which seems to lead me forward, toward a utopian time, or to return me backward, to some place within myself: a double movement… When I look at those landscapes for which I feel a particular fondness, it is as though I am certain that I have already been there, or that I am on my way there. Freud says of the mother’s body “that there is no place of which one can say with such certainty that one has already been there.” And so the essence of the landscape (chosen out of desire) will be: homely, awakening in me the mother (and always soothing).

"CAMERA LUCIDA-REFLECTIONS ON PHOTOGRAPHY"  by Roland Barthes

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