The Photographic Message

Roland Barthes

The photographic paradox

• What is the content of the photographic message?• What does the photograph transmit? (17)→ the scene, the literal reality

• What is the nature of the relationship between reality/the object and its image?

→ from object to image there is REDUCTION (e.g. in proportion, perspective, colour etc.) but not transformation (17)

• What is the effect of this relationship?→ no necessity to set up a code between object and image• The image is a perfect analogon (~ analogical perfection)→ photographic message is a message without a code, is a

continuous message→ the photograph is constituted by a ”denoted” message (18)

The photographic paradox

• What effects does this have (in the photographs relationship to language or text)?

→ the analogical plenitude (or the sense of denotation, the photograph’s objectivity) causes description irrelevant and impossible

• What is the implication of ”description”?→ to describe consists a second-order message deriving

from a code (~ language), a connotation → to describe is not simply imprecision or

incompleteness→ it changes the structure to SIGNIFY something

different to what is shown (19)

The photographic paradox

• The photographic paradox can be seen as the co-existence of two messages:

→ the one without a code (the photographic analogue)→ the other with a code (the ”art” or treatment or rhetoric of

the photograph)→ the connoted message develops on the basis of the

message without a code → connoted message necessitates decipherment (20)

Connotation procedures• Trick effects → in the first three intervention w/out warning in the plane of denotation; it utilises the credibility of the

photograph (21)

• Pose→ a photograph can signify only because of the existence of a store of stereotyped attitudes which form

ready-made elements of signification (22) → a ”historical grammar” of iconographic connotation ought to look for its material in culture

• Objects→ objects as inducers of associations of ideas→ the connotation emerges from the signifying units (captures as an immediate and spontaneous scene)

(23)

→ in the ones above connotation is produced by modifying reality itself, that is, the denoted message (21)

• Photgenia→ the image itself ”embellished” by techniques of lighting, exposure and printing (23)• Aestheticism→ photography turns painting, composition or visual substance (24)→ it signifies itself as ”art”→ it imposes a more subtle and complex signified than would be possible with other connotation procedures• Syntax→ sequence of photographs where the signifier of connotation is no longer at the level of the fragments of

the sequence but at the suprasegmental level, of the concatenation (24)

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Stills (1978)

Edward Steichen

The flatiron building (1905)

Text and Image

• What characterises the relationship between text and image?

→ the text constitutes a parasitic message ~ words as parasitic (25)→ it is designed to connote, to ”quicken” the image→ the image no longer illustrates the words→ the image does not elucidate or ”realize” the text→ the text sublimates and rationalises the image→ the text loads the image, burdens it with a culture, a moral, an

imagination (26)→ formerly there was reduction from the text to image→ now it is amplification from the one to the otherThe connotation differs according to the way in which the text

(caption, headline, article) is presented.→ it can stress/amplify (27)→ invent new signified (retroactively projected onto the image)→ contradict the image (for a compensatory connotation)

Photographic insignificance• What is the nature of the code of connotation?→ it is not natural or artificial but HISTORICAL/CULTURAL

(27)→ the relationship between signifier and signified remains

entirely historical (non-motivated cf. motivated relationship that is a natural connection between signifier

and signified)

• What is signification? What are its characteristics?

→ signification is developed by a given society and history→ signification is a dialectical movement (that resolves the

contradiction between cultural and natural man) (28)→ due to the code of connotation the reading of a

photograph depends on the reader’s knowledge ~ language

Photographic insignificance

”perceptive” connotation: • At the moment of perception there is

immediately verbalisation. (28)• an inner metalanguage is activated”cognitive” connotation:• Its signifiers are picked out and localized

in certain parts of the analogon. (29)Ideological/ethical connotation:• It introduces reasons, values into the

reading of an image