CMM1113 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Semiotics, Roland Barthes
5 Jun 2018
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CMM1113
WEEKLY READER: WEEK 3: STURKEN/ALLMARK.
THE MYTH OF PHOTOGRAPHIC TRUTH
• That many images today are involved in some sort of human intervention behind the
camera as people need make particular choices in order for images to be some sort
of representation.
• Photography was developed in Europe in the early nineteenth century which was
when the concept of Positivism came about. Positivism is the believed that empirical
truths could be established through visual evidence.
• Photography is a way of providing Positivism as it is an image captured rather than
writing with pen and paper. Therefore, Machinery was regarded as more reliable
than humans.
• In the context of positivism, photos and the camera was taken to be a scientific tool
for registering reality and representing the world more accurately than anything else
before.
• A photograph is often perceived as to be an unmediated copy of the real world, a
trace of reality skimmed off the very surface of life. This concept is known as the
myth of photographic truth.
• Photograph although, has ee the fous of a deates, its ee put i
courtrooms about the different truths that an image can tell.
• PHOTOGRAPHS= TRUTH/TO PROVE SOMETHING TOOK PLACE/ RECORDS OF
EVENTS
• E.G.: Robert Franks photo, in his essay The Americans shows a segregated group of
white and black Americans on a city trolley in the USA. This becomes a factual piece
of evidence about the past as it records a particular moment in time when racial
segregation was around.
• Denotative and connotative meanings in images. They can either denote certain
apparent truths and the same image can connote more culturally specific meanings.
–Concept by French theorist Roland Barthes.
IMAGES AND IDEOLOGY:
• Ideologies are systems of beliefs that exist within cultures, a shared set of values and
beliefs.
• We can use images and media to construct representations of certain ideologies and
help persuade people to share certain views or not.
• Photographs are a primary medium for evidence in the criminal justice system
(Persoal ID, passports, driers liees, shool ID ards ad other istitutios,
mugshots etc...)
• each change in a photographs context means a change in meaning.
HOW WE NEGOTIATE THE MEANING OF IMAGES:
• Meaning is not within the image but is acquired when images are consumes, viewed
and interpreted.
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