Roland Barthes uses the terms studium and punctum when he poses the question: what it is that distinguishes a photograph from a mere snapshot? He uses the word studium to refer to the interest we may have in photographs. Studium is the interest we have when we open a newspaper, for example. We participate in the faces, the gestures, the actions, the events, and the situations that are depicted. The studium is in the order of liking or disliking, but not of loving or overwhelming emotions; it mobilizes a half desire. It is the same interest that one takes in watching people or their clothes while having a coffee on a terrace, and that one may find “all right.” To recognize the studium is to recognize the photographer’s intentions, of which one may approve or disapprove. But what breaks or punctures the studium of an image is the punctum. The term punctum means point, sting. Actually, Barthes is not really explaining why an image is compelling, but he draws our attention to the fact that it is so and he wonders why it is so. The difference is this: studium is the interest we invest in or bring to a photograph but punctum is that what disturbs us, what disturbs the studium of the image. “A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)” (Barthes, 1981, p. 27). The punctum is what I bring to the photograph and “what is nonetheless already there,” says Barthes (1981, p. 55). It is what may make me shocked, moved, fascinated, compelled, touched, or drawn to a photograph, text, or image.