The study mainly aims to analyze the Pulitzer Prize winning photographs of Daniel Berehulak using Roland Barthes’s ‘Studium’ and ‘Punctum’ theory that was projected in Camera Lucida. The paper attempts to study these aspects through surface analysis of the photographs (five selected photographs) from 2017 Pulitzer Prize Breaking News category in photojournalism, based on the scorn for human life within the Philippines. The surface analysis includes the cultural, historical and social meanings extracted via semiotic study (Studium) and the distinctive striking feature in each photograph that produce a meaning without any recognizable symbolic system (Punctum). This meaning will be unique in reaction of the individual spectator of the images.

Keywords : Studium, Punctum, Cultural, spectator, semiotics.