Lecture 9: Roland Barthes: The Photographic Message

Roland Barthes

• 1915-1980
• a French literary theorist, philosopher, writer and academic.
• He wrote some key texts on photography
  • in particular his writings address a number of ways in which we can interpret and understand the meanings within photographs over and above what the image depicts.
• Barthes proposed to analyse photographs and with reference to two of his key writings on the subject:
  • ‘The Photographic Message’ 1961
  • ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ 1964
• Barthes proposed a way of ‘reading’ photographs based on an existing theory called Semiotics.

What is Semiotics?

• The theory was developed in order to understand how language works
• Semiotics asks questions such as How do we use language to communicate? What is the relationship between the words we use and the real things in the world that we are referring to?
• The terms comes from the ancient Greek word semeion meaning “sign”
• It is a way of analysing meanings by looking at the signs which communicate these meanings
• ‘Signs’ can be words, pictures or symbol

Key Theorists

• Charles S. Pierce (1839-1914)
  • American Philosopher
  • Semiotic analysis of images & non-verbal signs supported by his work
  • Symbolic, Iconic & Indexical signs
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
  • Swiss Linguist
  • Defined the linguistic sign as two sided formed by a signifier (material aspect) and a signified (mental concept)
• Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
  • French Literary Critic
  • Semiotic analysis of the media, “Mythology of the Month”
  • Denote, Connote, Myth: societal constructions of the seeming “natural” in society.

Why use Semiotics?

• Semiotics reveals the hidden nature of verbal and visual communication
• It sheds light on the way in which our imaginations fill in the gaps and sorts out the misunderstandings in human communication
• A message must be understandable to its audience for meaning to take place
• “Readers” (the audience) negotiate between their experience and the message itself
• Semioticians see the generation of meaning as an active process

Aspects of study in semiotics

• The sign itself (image/word)
  • Variety of different ways signs have of conveying meaning
• The codes or systems into which signs are organized (language)
  • A variety of codes have developed to meet the needs of a society/culture
• The culture within which these codes and signs operate.
  • The use of these codes and signs for the culture’s existence, form and extension.

Charles S. Pierce: Icon, Index, Symbol

• An icon signifies in virtue of its resemblance, or its analogical relation to what it wishes to represent.
  • The icon is the simplest sign since it is a pattern that physically resembles what it `stands for’.
• A symbol does not resemble what it refers to; it signifies through the force of convention (language)
• An index does not necessarily resemble its referent. It signifies in virtue of a relationship with its referent, often defined by some sensory feature (visible, audible etc)

Ferdinand de Saussure: Signifier – Signified 

• Saussure offered a ‘dyadic’ or two-part model of the sign
• He defined a sign as being composed of:
  • – a ‘signifier’ (signifiant) – the form which the sign takes
  • – the ‘signified’ (signifié) – the concept it represents
• EX:
  • The word ‘Open’ (when it is invested with meaning by someone who encounters it on a shop doorway) is a sign consisting of:
    • a signifier: the word open
    • a signified concept: that the shop is open for business.
• EX:
  • The word Cat
    • The signifier is made up of the letters “c-a-t” and sound and appearance of the word.
    • The reader/listener hears/reads this sign but doesn’t consider an actual cat but the concept of “cat”, the signified: Four legged furry animal which meows and purrs.
    • In this case the image of a cat operates in the same way as the word – it is visual rather than a linguistic signifier

How do signs and meanings relate?

• The word (signifier) ‘cat’ doesn’t relate to a single individual – it stands for all cats. Your image of a cat will be very different from mine.
• There is an arbitrary relation between a sign and its meaning. The relation between signs and what they signify is based on convention.
• If the relation between signifier and signified is only defined by convention, then meaning or signification is socially and historically constructed.

Roland Barthes: Semiology

• Semiology as cultural criticism
  • From the study of verbal language to that of cultural phenomena: films, photographs, fashion, advertising, etc.
  • Developing a common vocabulary and a rigorous or “scientific” method for the critical analysis of mass culture.
  • Understanding the complexity and meaningfulness of all cultural artifacts despite their apparent “obviousness”.
• Messages and Codes
  • As a Linguist, Barthes makes a distinction between ‘messages’ and ‘codes’
  • A message is a singular, meaningful unit of discourse (picture or writing).
  • A code is an abstraction created by the reader -a logic reconstructed from the materials provided by the message.
    • (e.g., the idea of ‘cat-ness’ that we get from seeing a picture of cat, or seeing the word ‘cat’)
  • Barthes argues that this distinction between messages and codes is problematic when we deal with photography, because of the special nature of the image.

The ‘reality effect’ of photographs

• The “reality-effect”: So-called “realism” of the image makes it appear to be “natural” rather than socially and historically constructed.
• The photograph transmits the literal reality of the scene depicted. However there is no requirement to set up a relay between the object and its photographic image (to create a code).
• The photograph appears to be a ‘message without a code’
  • There are other messages without codes drawings, paintings, cinema, theatre – are all analogues of reality
  • All these ‘imitative’ arts carry a denoted message (their resemblance to reality) and a connoted message which is the way in which we approach these art forms (as stylistic interpretations of reality which in themselves carry additional messages).
  • However, the photograph seems to only carry a single message – the denoted message. This first order message completely fills it and leaves no room for a second order (connoted) message

The Photographic Paradox

• Photographs appear to be objective, factual.
  • However it’s likely that they too have connoted messages which can be inferred from the production and reception of the message.
• The photographic paradox is therefore the coexistence of two messages:
  • the one without a code (the photographic analogue) and the one with a code (the ‘art’ or treatment of the subject, the rhetoric of the photograph)

Denotation/Connotation

• Denotation:
  • what is literally depicted by the photograph: elements in the image which communicate facts:
    • Large building, sunny day, empty surroundings
• Connotation:
  • what is suggested by the depiction to the viewer: extra associations specific to culture or through knowledge of the context of the image:
    • Buckingham Palace, London, royalty, wealth, ‘Britishness’, political inequality etc

Relationship between terms

• Message
  • Signifier (representation)
  • Denotation
  • Photograph
  • Obvious or informational
  • ‘Natural’ or non-coded
  • What is photographed
• Code
  • Signified (meaning)
  • Connotation
  • Caption
  • Symbolic
  • ‘Ideological’/cultural code
  • How and why it is photographed

Forms of Connotation

• It may be that the photograph is not consumed primarily as a denoted message, that is, as neutral, objective and analogous to reality. It’s likely that there are different orders of connotation at work in the photograph:
  • Perceptive connotation
    • the photograph is verbalised at the moment it is perceived. (this is similar to denotation, in that facts about the image content are perceived by the viewer immediately and without needing to name them)
  • Cognitive connotation
    • factual elements of the image are picked out or understood because of the viewer’s knowledge.
  • Ideological and ethical connotation
    • the elements that convey the strongest and most complex message.
• Perceptive connotation (denotation)
  • this is a picture of a crowded diner, in America, in the past. The diner is crowded with working men, they’re white, the waitresses are black. There’s masses of adverting of a cheap sugary snack all around them.
• Cognitive connotation
  • The feel is of the past, of the 1950s or 1960s. The prices seem cheap, the clothing and décor suggest it. This is an image by Robert Frank, from The Americans, he was photographing in the US around the late 1950s.
• Ideological and ethical connotation
  • Most of the men look straight ahead. They seem lost in their own worlds, isolated from all the hubbub around them. It seems to suggest that the U.S. at the time was a place where you can be in company but also be lonely, where you’re not very significant as an individual. Is there a further comment on gender/race divisions implied by the arrangement of customers/waitresses?

Some Forms of Connotation in the Photograph

• Pose
  • the position of a figure which itself contains messages from culture, history, literature and painting.
• Objects
  • objects are signifiers and associate with ideas in culture. The arrangement or selection of objects creates a connotation in the photograph
• Aestheticism
  • photographs which compositionally emulate paintings or other culturally known images
• Trick effects
  • the disruption of the credibility of the photograph as an analogon of reality by creating a false simulation.
• ‘Photogenia’
  • an informational structure related to the technology of photographic production (lighting, exposure, printing) through which certain effects (motion blur, double exposure etc) create connotations in the photograph.
• Syntax
  • the connotation create by viewing a sequence of images and which emerges from the photographs in relation to each other rather than singly.

Text and Image

• Text and image can never be read as the same thing.
• Sometimes text invents and projects an entirely new set of signifiers onto the image which are not detectable in the photograph.
• Or it can contradict what appears to be shown in the image.

Beyond connotation

• “Truly traumatic photographs are rare, for in photography the trauma is wholly dependent on the certainty that the scene ‘really’ happened: the photographer had to be there (which is the mystical definition of denotation). Assuming this….the traumatic photograph is the photograph about which there is nothing to say.. ”
  • (Barthes 1978 p.209)

The Rhetoric of the Image

• Barthes refined his initial analysis of photographic meaning that he had set out in ‘The Photographic Message’ a few years later in an essay entitled ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ (1964).
• Hidden messages
  • In this and later writings Barthes is particularly concerned with the ‘hidden messages’ that come to us via advertising, and how text and image combine to create meanings that are culturally created but yet are seen as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ because they are so familiar.
  • To do this he refined some of his terms, although the basic principles of his analysis remain the same.
• Multiple messages of advertising
  • Looking at advertising Barthes identified three message:
    • The linguistic message
      • (the words and text used to accompany images)
    • Non-coded Iconic message
  • • • (The “literal message” or ‘denotation’ of the picture)
    • Coded Iconic Message
      • (The “symbolic message” or ‘connotation’ of the picture)
• Myth
  • Some signs become so closely linked with a certain set of connotations that the reading of the messages becomes culturally and socially constrained to a particular set of ideas – they become ideological.
  • Barthes refers to these ideological messages as Myth
    • The function of Myth is to naturalize the cultural – in other words, to make dominant cultural and historical values, attitudes and beliefs seem entirely ‘natural’, ‘normal’, self-evident, timeless, obvious ‘common-sense’ – and thus objective and ‘true’ reflections of ‘the way things are’.
  • Myth provides a third order of signification beyond denotation and connotation
    • In the third (mythological or ideological) order of signification the sign reflects major culturally-variable concepts underpinning a particular worldview – such as masculinity, femininity, freedom, individualism, Englishness etc
  • At the denotative level this is a photograph of the movie star Marilyn Monroe.
  • At a connotative level we associate this photograph with Marilyn Monroe’s star qualities of glamour, sexuality, beauty – if this is an early photograph – but also with her depression, drug-taking and untimely death if it is one of her last photographs.
  • At a mythic level we understand this sign as activating the myth of Hollywood: the dream factory that produces glamour in the form of the stars it constructs, but also the dream machine that can crush them – all with a view to profit and expediency.
    • (Hayward 1996, p.310