Camera Lucida, Stress Positions and Photography as Procedure

I read Roland Barthe's Camera Lucida last week, twice. I didn't understand all of it but some of it was quite clear. Proustian referrences sometimes baffle me a bit but on the whole I could absorb the message. There were several things in the book that interested me, chiefly, how Barthes mentions that early photographs were an almost surgical procedure, requiring the models to sit still for stretches of forty-five minutes in bright sunlight. This element of pain or discomfort coupled with Barthes view that the photograph is intrinsically linked to death intrigued me. It's a possible avenue for exploration, either through a kind of 'endurance' photograph, wherein the shutter could be open for a set amount of time, say ten minutes, whilst the sitter must not move, without the use of an armature. Or, either a video or photography observation of a subject attempting to 'endure', the typically Catholic punishment of holding ones arms out crucifix-style whilst hefting a bible in each hand is a possibility, this treatment of the 'endurance' is also strongly linked to the idea of stress-positions, an ethically questionable method of non-marking torture linked with the interrogation of prisoners of war in Iraq. (The somwhat cartoony-image below is in lieu of some of the more graphic images.)