“How do we read a photograph? What do we perceive? In what order, according to what progression?” (Image Music Text, 28). These are question Barthes raises in his essay. Through Barthes’s “The Photographic Message” from Image Music Text (1977) and “Studium and Punctum” from Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1981), I understand how to read a photo and what is the value of a photograph. Photography is not as simple as an image or a photo. Barthes’ readings give an idea that photography activates within us what we already know, and provides a realistic frozen moment. Photography drives two deep messages or values. It contains the information associated with objectivity and subjectivity. Barthes called these “reality and language” and …show more content…
He provides, “Of the two structures, one is already familiar, that of language (but not, it is true, that of the 'literature' formed by the language-use of the newspaper; an enormous amount of work is still to be done in this connection), while almost nothing is known about the other, that of the photograph”(Image Music Text, P16). I understand that language means the text and description of a photo from a writer. The photograph itself is about “reality”, which is composed by shapes, shadows, lines and composition. For a photograph, viewers receive the same information, for instance, we read the same shapes, lines, and subject matter. However, we often think that we can easily understand and read these subjects, but actually we know nothing about them. Barthes called these “denoted message”. Text and language are different; text is text, and we can read and get a sense of what authors are trying to tell us. Although a photograph has thousands of different descriptions, readers will get those thousands of words or meanings. Back to the reality of photography, Barthes provides, “certainly the image is not the reality but at least it is its perfect analogon and it is exactly this analogical perfection, which, to common sense, defines the photograph” (Image Music Text, 17). The image is not the reality that we traditionally thought. It is “analogon”, a resemblance to reality, but not truly reality. Barthes believes that photography is a kind of language, which is a message without any code but delivers a continuous message. The message is comprised of two meanings, which are denoted message and connoted message. Barthes explains, “a denoted message, which is the analogon itself, and a connoted message, which is the manner in which the society to a certain extent communicates what it thinks of it” (Image Music Text, 17). In other words, denoted message is what we see and read
The poem begins by exploring how the speaker’s grandfather was a photographer in World War One and how he turned his hobby into his job: “Opened a shop. Turned it into a family affair”. Kay then goes on to introduce the father’s speaker and how he approached photography differently: “His father knew the equipment but not the art. He knew the darks but not the brights, my father learned the magic.” By first introducing the grandfather as a character the reader can better understand the speaker’s father. Since the grandfather took pictures for the war the moments he captured through his lens were much more gruesome, whereas the speaker’s father chooses to stray from this and focus on positivity or as it’s referred to in the poem “light”. Kay then introduces the speaker’s mother, exploring her passion for photography and giving her the title of “artist”. While the grandfather turned photography into his job, the speaker’s father uses photography as a way of capturing noteworthy events, for example: “he travelled across the country to follow a forest fire, hunted it with his camera for a week.” Finally, the speaker’s mother focuses more on the artistry of photography which is seen through her focus on the use of her darkroom. By exploring each of these characters, Kay
“ The horizon was the color of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out among the bodies” (Zusak 175). The device is used in the evidence of the quote by using descriptives words that create a mental image. The text gives the reader that opportunity to use their senses when reading the story. “Somehow, between the sadness and loss, Max Vandenburg, who was now a teenager with hard hands, blackened eyes, and a sore tooth, was also a little disappointed” (Zusak 188). This quote demonstrates how the author uses descriptive words to create a mental image which gives the text more of an appeal to the reader's sense such as vision. “She could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells. Whisker coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose” (Zusak 201). The quotes allows the reader to visualize what the characters facial features looked like through the use of descriptive words. Imagery helps bring the story to life and to make the text more exciting. The reader's senses can be used to determine the observations that the author is making about its characters. The literary device changes the text by letting the reader interact with the text by using their observation skills. The author is using imagery by creating images that engages the reader to know exactly what's going on in the story which allows them to
Having such an image before our eyes, often we fail to recognize the message it is trying to display from a certain point of view. Through Clark’s statement, it is evident that a photograph holds a graphic message, which mirrors the representation of our way of thinking with the world sights, which therefore engages other
The role of photography is questioned; he asks, what about photography makes it a valid medium? We read about the operator (the photographer), spectrum (the subject) and spectator (the viewer), also about the stimulus (what we see in the photograph) and the punctum (the unclassifiable, the thing that makes the photograph important to the viewer). According to Barthes, the photograph is an adventure for the viewer, but it is ultimately death, the recording of something that will be dead after the picture is taken. This idea is the main focus of Barthes’ writing, the photograph “that-has-been”, in Latin “interfuit: what I see has been here, in this place which extends between infinity and the subject; it has been here, and yet immediately separated; it has been absolutely, irrefutably present, and yet already deferred” (Barthes, 76).... ...
Photography is defined at the art or practice of taking and processing photographs. To understand photography is having insight or good judgment to know how to take the picture, but also edit it if need be. Does photography limit our understanding of the world? What some people haven’t realized is that photography is all around us, whether it is in the person’s mind to see it or not. While we see photography throughout our daily routine, people dismiss the small types of photography and focus on the bigger sceneries like other countries beautiful cities and landscapes. It’s true that in this day and age, most photographs we see have been altered in some way. When photographers use Photoshop to edit our photos, we use many different ways to make that image appealing to the eye. Although, photographers unless told to do so will not change an image into something totally absurd that takes away from being astatically pleasing. Images are a gateway to the insight of the rest of the world’s cultures landscapes, and architecture, and photography is the key aspect to it. Photography is a one way to see the world, but it is better if you go and travel around the world to see it. In order to see if photography actually limits our understanding, we have to first look at the positive side of photography.
The purpose of this paper is to explain how photography became an accepted form of art, as this was accomplished by Gaspard-Felix Tournachon. This was accomplished based on continuous experimentation of techniques to develop photographs, and how he had set up his environments to emphasize the subject and it’s beauty. Though Gaspard was more interested in caricatures and journalism, he decided to apply photography as a rapid form to create caricatures (Janson, 2012) after a friend convinced him to consider the possibility. Gaspard’s work became very popular, as he focused his photographs mainly on people higher in society, as well as Paris’ beauty (Cadava, 2012). Gaspard continued his work as a caricature artist, as there are dated caricatures during his time as a portrait photographer.
where people decided to reproduce art as a picture of what was going on. Instead, this artistic
It appears to me that pictures have been over-valued; held up by a blind admiration as ideal things, and almost as standards by which nature is to be judged rather than the reverse; and this false estimate has been sanctioned by the extravagant epithets that have been applied to painters, and "the divine," "the inspired," and so forth. Yet in reality, what are the most sublime productions of the pencil but selections of some of the forms of nature, and copies of a few of her evanescent effects, and this is the result, not of inspiration, but of long and patient study, under the instruction of much good sense…
For the purpose of this argument I will explore the image in the context using Barthes methodology in its “signs” (Barthes 1972) produced and deconstruct the image in basic building blocks.
In the book, the Barthes creates some terms. Operator, Spectator and Spectrum are the first one. The Operator means the photographer, the viewer who looks at the Photograph becomes the Spectator and the thing emitted by subject is called eidolon(image, phantom, ghost), in other word the Spectrum. Barthes talks about Operator’s ability to take the picture of naturalness from the situation. He says that a Photograph is closer to the Spectator than the Operator and the Spectrum is the closest one. The stream of his thought naturally moves from the subject of the picture to viewers with excluding the person taking a picture. It was interesting for the artists like me because for artists, the subject matter goes first and then the work is created later. Particularly, for me, considering viewers mostly comes at the end or sometime, I even ignore the audience. For a viewer like Barthes, seeing the work is a completely opposite way to creating the work.
We encounter art everyday. Art is paintings and sculptures, music and dance, film and photography. It is also fashion designing and architecture, novels and magazines. These seemingly different things have one thing in common – they are all ways in which humans convey themselves. For thousands of years, humans have used symbols to tell a story or describe a struggle. Art is the use of these symbols, symbols that represent us in some distinct way.
Paintings, like many forms of art, are very subjective—what one may find intriguing another may completely disagree. “Art is physical material that affects a physical eye and conscious brain” (Solso, 13). To glance at art, we must go through a process of interpretation in order to understand what it is we are looking at. Solso describes the neurological, perceptual, and cognitive sequence that occurs when we view art, and the often inexpressible effect that a work of art has on us. He shows that there are two aspects to viewing art: nativistic perception—the synchronicity of eye and brain that transforms electromagnetic energy into neuro-chemical codes—which is "hard-wired" into the sensory-cognitive system; and directed perception, which incorporates personal history—the entire set of our expectations and past experiences—and knowledge (Solso, preface)
Photojournalism is a specific form of journalism that employs the use of images to form a news story that meaningfully contributes to the media. This allows a photographer to capture stills that tell the story of a moment in time. Photojournalism creates a transparency between the media and the people as it depicts an accurate representation where meaning can be misinterpreted through text. Photojournalism largely contributes to the way we understand the reality of a moment. Becker (1982) supports this concept as he compares photography to paintings. He says that paintings get their meaning from the painters, collectors, critics, and curators; therefore photographs get their meaning from the way people understand them and use them. Photojournalist’s
Although Barthes spoke mainly of literature (or ‘writing’, as he clarifies, to avoid the connotations that literature had [Barthes 1977, 147]), he also discusses music in his essay entitled ‘Musica Practica’ [Barthes 1977, 149-154] and his theories can be extended to all art forms.
Photography has created an outlet for the masses to story tell. It has a way of speaking without words like most art forms and is a manner of expression in itself. To eradicate photography from humans would be equivalent to taking away a limb from humankind. Our society has grown an immense amount of dependency on it. Photography has become almost a daily menial task such as brushing your teeth; where we must take pictures of the things we deem important or equally unimportant, even more so with the invention of social media outlets such as Instagram and Snapchat, where photography is the main source of communication between people who use them. Susan Sontag offers the basis of what taking pictures can undertake in both our daily lives and moments that are not part of our daily lives, such as travel. Traveling to places where one is not accustomed can flare pent up anxiety. A way to subdue that anxiety could be through taking pictures, since it’s the only factor that we have total control over in a space where we don’t have much, or, any control of our surrounding environment. On the other hand, taking photos can also be a tool of power in the same sense as it allows for it to be a defense against anxiety. With the camera in our hands, we have the power to decide who, what, where, when, and why we take a picture. This in turn also gives the person who took the picture power over those who later analyze the photos, letting them decide the meaning of the photo individually, despite the intended or true meaning.