Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, writer and academic. He wrote essays on photography and addresses how we can understand photography and photographs we take and the meanings behind them. Two of his key writings ‘The photographic message’ 1961, and The rhetoric of the image’ 1964, proposed how we can read photographs through an existing theory: semiotics.
Semiotics allows us to understand how language works and what signs communicate to us through photographs. Semiotics allow us to see how signs convey meaning, how codes (language) develop due to the culture and society and the culture in which the codes and signs operate. A no smoking sign is universal as we all know exactly what it means and what it stands for. There is always a signifier and a signified concept so what exactly the sign signifies and what the concept of the sign means to you.
Barthes in the Photographic messages talks about messages and codes, and makes a distinction between a message and a code. There are also denotations and connotations in messages as we approach an art form and that depends on what we see. The photographic paradox is denotation and connotation, as a denotation is exactly what the image is and the connotation is what we see that isn’t there, the message of what the image gives us. There is a denotation and a connotation in every image we see.
In The Rhetoric of the Image Barthes is talks about hidden messages that we receive through advertising, there is a linguistic message in advertising that is the text in the advertising, the denotation and the connotation.
Georgia Fell Photography 