Visual Communication // 14th March 2012
Visual Communication // 14th March 2012
- 'The rhetoric of the image'
- Roland Barthes / Semiotics
Images are created to communicate certain ideas, they are visually constructed
- Photograph of the cast of the only way is essex - it is primarily a picture of young men and women enjoying themselves, however ideas
about the image change when it is viewed within the context of a newspaper article
- Within images there are layers of meaning, culture has the main impact upon changing the meaning of an image and our own influences
affect how we see image, read and understand images
- There is different meaning created by the image if you have a greater knowledge of what is going on and existing within the image. This
is where the theory of denotation and connotation is used in the analysis of images. The image denotes people sitting on a sofa,
however the image connotes a lot more if you have a greater understanding of the show itself. Cultural connotations expand the
contextual meaning of the image.
- Roland Barthes said the Denotation is level of meaning which simply describes what an image is depicting. It is the literal or common
sense meaning of image that most understand. Connotation of an image is what the image is implying or suggesting about its subject
and is often as a result of cultural meaning.
- Roland Barthes theories stem from studies of linguistics and language by applying these theories to images
- However the theory that images represent or consist of a visual language is still debated today.
- The question of ‘what is said?’ how does this apply to images and does it create a visual language and work in the same way that it
does for written language
- Semioticians - People who explore and explain the meaning behind images,
- ‘Another difficulty in analysing connotation is that there is no particular analytical language corresponding to the particularity of its signifieds - how are the signifieds of connotation to be named ?’
Roland Barthes ‘The Rhetoric of the Image ‘ in Image, Music Text 1977 p.47
‘The Rhetoric of an image’ A theorist called Roland Barthes based his approach to understanding images around a set of principles that can be
- applied to any image
‘The Rhetoric of an image’ A theorist called Roland Barthes based his approach to understanding images around a set of principles that can be
- applied to any image
-Symbols are constantly used within images because the audience can recognize them and relate to them which create further and more
understood meaning within an image.
-The meaning of a image can be different to everyone because of differing social contexts and personal baggage.
- This common domain of the signifieds of connotation is that of Ideology, which cannot but be single for a given society and history, no matter what signifiers of connotation it may use.
- There are two types of meaning created by the subjects within an image the Signifier - what the audience can see in the image and the
Signified what is conveyed by the subject of the image, in this model the image is referred to as the sign.
- The domes found in roman building are also used within democratic building within a america as these building symbolise and reference
the power and technical competence of the roman civilization. In the same way that prestigious educational establishments within
american still teach latin because of its connection to power and status of Rome.
- The Reichstag building in Germany was a symbol of the former Germany that is now unified into one country between 1980-1990, the
Germans needed to create symbol that altered the perception of the building from bad to good within german society.
- An artist was employed who decided to wrap the building entirely in silk, the building then became known as the building that was wrapped in
silk as opposed to a building that was despised by the germans as it harked back to there unwanted past.
- Rudolf Wittkower was primarily interested in the way in which images were used in certain contexts and how this creates a meaning for
the image. Time, place and culture at the time the image is first displayed is what creates the images context.
-Pierre Bourdieu a french theorist said that the baggage people carry around with them and there lifestyle choices all impact and effect how on
views and understands an image, for example how someone with a wealthy background may view an image in comparison to how a poor person
with a bad upbringing may view an image.
-In comparison to the world of warcraft image the image of a stained glass window featuring a dragon immediately changes the context of the
image, because of the stained glass the viewer is aware in image is from a church and now the dragon is used as a symbol for evil.
-Meaning is put into an image by the image maker, meaning is not simply created by itself.
