DESMA 8 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Connotation, Denotation, Semiotics
Document Summary
L e c t u r e 4. Theories seek to explain usually by proposing concepts, but in this they are often distinguished from doing or practice - david rodowick, an elegy for theory . Photography is an element of a new and homogenous terrain of an element of a new and homogenous terrain of consumption and circulation in which an observer becomes lodged. Desire to see things rather than necessarily view things. Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel. Unfortunately the ante keeps getting raised - partly through the very proliferation of such im- ages of horror. To write poetry after auschwitz is barbaric - theodor adorno, 1949 (how are we still to create art after facing such imagery?) In the study of signs, which is known as semiotics, denotation is when a word expresses something literally. When a word can carry other meanings as well, sometimes even hidden meanings, we call that connotation.
