This week explores the idea of reading photographs. How do we decode or decipher the image and what factors influence how we interpret images both individually and collectively.
“Thanks to its code of connotation the reading of the photograph is thus always, historical: it depends on the reader’s ‘knowledge’ just as thought it were a matter of real language, intelligible only if one has learned the signs.” Barthes, Roland and Stephan, Heath. 1977. Image Music Text, London: Fontana
Barthes view contrasts that of Szarkowski’s structuralist analysis who suggests that images can be read almost like that of texts whereby he articulates five essential components necessary in reading a photograph: the thing itself, the frame, the detail, the time, and the vantage point. Barthes’ view is that these structuralist thoughts fail to investigate the inherent biases held by the viewer. He argues that a post-structuralist semiotic analysis is essential in the interpretation of an image. He redressed the mechanistic nature of structural analysis with a new emphasis on subjectivity, context and cultural factors.
In a post-structural semiotic image analysis, Barthes uses both denotation and connotation simultaneously in decoding an image. The former is what we identify in an image and the latter is the ideology in the message. We use both when ‘reading’ and image. As Douglas Crimp points out, the structuralist view of Szarkowski was ultimately too reductive and ignores the plurality of discourses in which photography has participated. (Crimp, D. 1999. ‘The Museum’s Old, the Library’s New Subject’ in Evans, J. & Hall, S. (ed.) Visual Culture: The Reader. London: Sage). This plurality of discourses brings the viewer and their subjectivity into the forefront of analysis.
Svalbard, Photo by Dawna Mueller, 2019
Context also plays an important role in the decoding of photographs as John A. Walker discusses in ‘The Camerawork Essays; Context and Meaning in Photography (Walker, John & Evans, Jessica. Chapter 2. ‘The Camerawork Essays, Context and Meaning in Photography. Context as a Determinant of Photographic Meaning. River). He stresses the importance of context in modulating the meaning of photography. He states that the ‘reader’ is impacted with a ‘mental context’ when viewing art and the way images are ‘read’, interpreted, evaluated, used and consumed are what has become known as a ‘reception theory’. This analysis marks a shift of emphasis from cultural production to cultural consumption, from authors to readers. (Barthes, Roland. 1968. ‘The Death of The Author. Image. Music. Text’. London: Fontana)
When photos are viewed the viewer contextualizes them. Depending on where they are viewed, a certain meaning is ascribed. Photos seen on the pages of newspapers are interpreted differently than the same photos hanging in a museum for example. Additionally, photos can be re-contexualized when they change locations. Wedding photographs in an album can be re-contexualized in a magazine advertisement. Re-contextualization of an image does not radically transform its denotation. What we are identifying in the image remains the same but the context and connotation that we ascribe to it change.
Barthes also discusses two types of interest a viewer might have in an image: the studium and the punctum (Barthes, Roland. 1982. Camera Lucida. London: Jonathan Cape). The studium refers the viewer’s objectivity. It refers more to what the photo contains and what we read from it. Whereas the ‘punctum’ refers to the emotional impact the image has on the viewer. In this sense the punctum is very much in the viewer’s subjective domain.
Additionally, the meaning of a photo is influenced not only by its moment of production but it is also subject to changes as the photograph changes its locations, viewing locations, circumstances and viewing public. Walker refers to this ‘spatio-temporal’ point of origin, which also is important in analyzing photos to determine their meaning. (Walker, John & Evans, Jessica. Chapter 2. ‘The Camerawork Essays, Context and Meaning in Photography. Context as a Determinant of Photographic Meaning. River). He suggests it is important to examine the life of a photo as well as its birth (Tagg, John. 1978. ‘The Currency of the Photograph’. Ed. 28. Screen Education.). To give consideration to its circulation, as it moves through time from context to context and is consumed by different groups of people.
Svalbard, Photo by Dawna Mueller, 2021
How does a post-structuralist analysis affect the way I interpret photographs, or the way my photographs are interpreted? Does a re-contextualisation of an image make a difference in the ‘studium’ and/or the ‘punctum’ for me (Barthes, R. 1982. Camera Lucida). I agree that a plurality of discourses are at play in any image analysis. For viewing with only the structuralist view espoused by Szarowski fails to take essential components of connotation and denotation into consideration. Additionally, image contextualisation, as well as any subsequent re-contextualisation from the original authorship, play an important role in an image’s interpretation. And as Barthes so poignantly noted, this is where the interpretation becomes open to infinite possibilities and once the emotional domain of the punctum is entered, the viewer is very much in charge and the final interpretation will vary from viewer to viewer, from culture to culture and even possible change over time.
It is clear that I bring my frame of reference as an educated, middle aged, white, middle class, liberal woman to the analysis. My subjective interpretation is contexualized by my experience as well as what I know about the photographer and the work being viewed. Additionally, the domain of the punctum is solely within my territory as I am the beneficiary of the immediate emotional reaction. I am fully aware that my interpretation might not be at all the emotional response that the artist was intending to illicit. And I am okay with the freedom being a viewer affords me in my analysis. And as a photographer, I am very much aware that once my images are made public, the intention in their creation might be mine alone. A semiotic analysis and deconstruction of images will change with time, but that is a small price to pay for the art of uncensored creation, for both the creator and the viewer.