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Notes - The Photographic Message, Barthes

Notes from The Photographic Message, Roland Barthes, 1961
Academic year: 2017/2018
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Lulu Gibbons
University of Exeter
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The Photographic Message, Roland Barthes, 1961 pages.ucsd/~bgoldfarb/cocu108/data/texts/Barthes_photographic - Photograph is a channel of transmission and a point of reception o Source of emission: staff of a newspaper, technicians taking a photo o Reception: public reading the paper o Channel of transmission: the newspaper itself - An image can change its meaning depending on the orientation of the receiver or audience o Defined by motives and attitudes - Whatever the origin and destination of the message, the photograph is not simply a product or a channel but also and object endowed with a structural autonomy. o It is necessary to provide for a specific method prior to sociological analysis and which can only be the immanent analysis of the unique structure that a photograph constitutes

The Photographic Paradox - What is the content of the photographic message? o By definition the scene itself, the literal reality  But to what extent has this reality been constructed? What does the frame include and disclude? What has the photographer allowed us to see and what are they keeping from the confines of the visual frame? - From the object to its photographic image there is a reduction – a transformation o In order to move from the reality to its photograph it is in no way necessary to divided up this reality into units and constitute these units as signs, substantially different from the object they communicate o The image is not reality but is at least its perfect analogon (especially a thing which is comparable with, resembles, or is equivalent to another) and it is this analogical perfection that defines the photograph o The photographic message is a continuous message - Photographs don’t have so much of a code or a style as other methods of reproduction (drawing, painting, cinema, theatre) o These all consist of 2 messages – the denoted message (the analogon its self) and connoted message (the manner in which society to a certain extent communicates what it thinks of it) o Connotation – to signify something different to what is shown - Whereas a photograph has a purely denotive status – what is show is expected to be exact and reality, objective o Yet there is a strong probability that the photographic messages is (at least in the press) connoted – one never just receives a photograph as an isolated image, there are always elements of inter/photo textuality  A photo is read connected more or less consciously by the public that consumes it to a traditional stock of signs - Thus the photographic paradox is one the coexistence of two messages. Can a photo be both natural and cultural? Objective and invested?  One without a code – the photographic analogue where what you see is the totality of the article  Analogue to be the resistance against the investment of values. Aesthetic realism

 The other with a code – the art, the treatment, the writing or rhetoric of the photograph, its meaning and alternative possible readings o Status of all forms of mass communication is the collusion of both these messages

Connotation Procedures - Connotation: the imposition of second meaning o Realised at different levels of the production of the photograph o Yet not necessarily part of the photographic structure - The photograph allows the photographer to conceal elusively the preparation to which he subjects the scene to be recorded Trick Effects - Photographs that have been faked, edited, bringing together the artificially two faces - Intervenes without warning in the place of denotation – utilizing the special credibility of the photograph (the photograph seen as truth since it is the identically documentation of events) - Signification is only possible to the extent that there is a stock of signs the beginnings of a code – photo textuality o Attitude becomes a sign for only a certain society – only given certain values - Code for connotation is neither artificial nor natural but historical Pose - It is the very pose of the subject which prepares the reading of the signified connotation - The photograph clearly only signifies because of the existence of a store of stereotyped attitudes – which form ready-made elements of signification - A ‘historical grammar’ of iconographic connotation ought thus to look for its material in painting, theatre, associations of ideas, precisely in ‘culture’ Objects - Meaning comes from the objects photographed (either the objects have been arranged specifically by the photographer or because the person choosing layout choses an photo of this or that object) - The objects are accepted inducers od associations of ideas - Veritable symbols: they are discontinuous and complete in themselves - Connotation somehow emerges from all these signifying units which appear to be captured as though the scene were immediate and spontaneous – that is to say without signification - Objects perhaps no longer possess a power but they do possess meaning Photogenia - The connotated message is the image itself, ‘embellished’ by techniques of lighting, exposure and printing - These techniques had a corresponding signified of connotation sufficiently constant to allow its incorporation in a cultural lexicon (vocabulary of a person, languages or branch of knowledge) of technical ‘effects’ o As for instance the ‘blurring of movement’ or ‘flowingness’ launched by Dr Steinert and his team to signify space-time - Such an inventory would be an excellent opportunity for distinguishing aesthetic effects from signifying effects Aestheticism - Visual substance treated with deliberation in its very material ‘texture’, as either to signify itself art or to impose a generally more subtle and

were a matter of a real language, intelligible only if one has learned the signs

  • To find this code of connotation would thus to be isolate, inventoriate and structure all the ‘historical’ elements of the photograph, all the parts of the photographic surface which derive their very discontinuity from a certain knowledge on the reader’s part, or from their cultural situation
  • Nothing tells us that the photograph contains ‘neutral’ parts, or at least it may be that the complete insignificance in the photograph is quite exceptional
  • But, how do we read a photograph? In what order, according to what progression?
  • Bruner and Piaget: there is no perception without immediate categorization o From this point of view. The image – grasped immediately by inner metalanguage – in actual fact has no denotated state, is immersed for its very social existence in at least an initial later of connotation, that of the categories of language o The photograph would thus coincide with the overall connotative planes of language
  • Press photographs, when best, comprise the greatest possible quantity of information of this kind in such a way as to render the reading fully satisfying o Connotation drawn from knowledge is always a reassuring force – man likes signs and likes them clear
  • Ideological/ethical connotation: introduces reasons or values in to the reading of the image
  • A strong connotation requiring a highly elaborated signifier of a readily syntactical order: conjunction of people, development of attitudes, constellation of objects
  • At the level of absolutely traumatic images: the trauma is a suspension of language, a blocking of meaning o But these images are rare since they depend on the certainty that the photographer was there, that the scene really happened o Is assuming this the trauma photograph is about which there is nothing to say, the shock photo by structure is insignificant: no value, no knowledge
  • The more trauma, the more difficult is connotation: the mythological effect of a photograph is inversely proportional to its traumatic effect o Because photographic connotation is an institutional activity  In relation to society overall, its function is to integrate man, to reassure him The photograph as a form of paradox: that which makes of an inert object a language and which transforms the unculture of a ‘mechanical’ art in to the most social of institutions.
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Notes - The Photographic Message, Barthes

Module: Introduction to Visual Culture (AHV1001)

University: University of Exeter

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13/12/17
The Photographic Message, Roland Barthes, 1961
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~bgoldfarb/cocu108/data/texts/Barthes_photographic.PDF
- Photograph is a channel of transmission and a point of reception
oSource of emission: staff of a newspaper, technicians taking a photo
oReception: public reading the paper
oChannel of transmission: the newspaper itself
- An image can change its meaning depending on the orientation of the
receiver or audience
oDefined by motives and attitudes
- Whatever the origin and destination of the message, the photograph is not
simply a product or a channel but also and object endowed with a
structural autonomy.
oIt is necessary to provide for a specific method prior to sociological
analysis and which can only be the immanent analysis of the unique
structure that a photograph constitutes
The Photographic Paradox
- What is the content of the photographic message?
oBy definition the scene itself, the literal reality
But to what extent has this reality been constructed? What
does the frame include and disclude? What has the
photographer allowed us to see and what are they keeping
from the confines of the visual frame?
- From the object to its photographic image there is a reduction – a
transformation
oIn order to move from the reality to its photograph it is in no way
necessary to divided up this reality into units and constitute these
units as signs, substantially different from the object they
communicate
oThe image is not reality but is at least its perfect analogon (especially
a thing which is comparable with, resembles, or is equivalent to another) and
it is this analogical perfection that defines the photograph
oThe photographic message is a continuous message
- Photographs don’t have so much of a code or a style as other methods of
reproduction (drawing, painting, cinema, theatre)
oThese all consist of 2 messages – the denoted message (the
analogon its self) and connoted message (the manner in which
society to a certain extent communicates what it thinks of it)
oConnotation – to signify something different to what is shown
- Whereas a photograph has a purely denotive status – what is show is
expected to be exact and reality, objective
oYet there is a strong probability that the photographic messages is
(at least in the press) connoted – one never just receives a
photograph as an isolated image, there are always elements of
inter/photo textuality
A photo is read connected more or less consciously by the
public that consumes it to a traditional stock of signs
- Thus the photographic paradox is one the coexistence of two messages.
Can a photo be both natural and cultural? Objective and invested?
One without a code – the photographic analogue where what
you see is the totality of the article
Analogue to be the resistance against the investment of
values. Aesthetic realism

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