barebones communication

5. Aestheticism

Obscurity is not a world unknown to Barthes. Or to his readers or his critics.

Particularly if you want to venture into his world of photography. Barthes is famous for his article on the Third Meaning, that he wrote for the French periodical Cahiers du Cinéma in 1970. Here he introduces the notion of the obtuse meaning of an image. Some would rather call this the obscure meaning of an image (I will handle this issue in a separate post). 

I have to admit though, that already in 1961 when introducing his fifth connotation of aestheticism obscurity is present. To me it is, anyway.

Barthes states: “when photography turns painting, composition or visual substance treated with deliberation in its very material “texture”, it is either so as to signify itself as “art” (which was the case with the “pictorialism” of the beginning of the century) or to impose a general more subtle and complex signifier than would be possible with other connotation procedures”.

I’m am not sure what Barthes means with “a general more subtle and complex signifier”. So I am not in a position to be very helpful here. Sorry about that, but I urge you to pick up Barthes’ text directly, and tell me what this is all about. I will be more than happy to be educated here :-). How his connotation procedure of aestheticism can act as a mean of laying content into an photography, obscures me. Simple as that.

Here is an example of what I would call aestheticism in Barthes’ meaning “photography turns painting”. Or at least such a trial. This image, that is shot in Barthes’ own country, France, are overly saturated and filtered to make it look more like a painting than a photography.

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Buy the English translation of Barthes’ work. Follow the link and support the site:
Image-Music-Text

Again I am referring to a recent post for an overview of what Roland Barthes has to say about connotation procedures in his article The Photographic Message from 1961.

Let me also explain the rather technical syntax for the titles of these posts. Barthes used the name connocations procedures (in the English translation that is). Each have a additional title and a number. The first precedure he actually talks about is trick effects, or how you can change the overall meaning content of a photography by “tricking” your way around. In my post chronology this is post 4 (of 6).

1. Trick effects

Imagine that a certain politician fell out of grace. You could simply remove him from the photograph without anyone noticing and still present the photo as a historical fact. Or you could add a person or two, change the background from indoor to outdoor. There are many ways that you can go about such a intent.

Trick effects can be crude like in the instances mentioned, or they can be minor when you change the saturation of a colour, do a simple straightening of a horizon, or just add a bit of contrast to the final image.

Barthes does not mention these last option in his article, but I will add them here, since image manipulation of this sort have increased severely over the years. With photo editor software, this is a piece of cake nowadays. Even removing or adding a person is fairly easy.

Go to any photo site on the internet, you will find heavily manipulated stuff all over. In fact you will find much more manipulated stuff then straight photography. Nothing wrong in that, as long as you are aware of what is going on. It is not always there for you to see at first glance. You may not like this, since it blurs the borders between “reality” and “fiction”, but I am afraid that you have to live with it. 

Bringing it down to basics; image manipulation might alter both the denotative and the connotative content of an image. Thus it is in Barthes’ term a connotation procedure.

In the picture you find below, you’ll see such a trick that Barthes is intending in his article. I have inserted the head of a woman into the lens this gentleman (whom I know well) looks through. Just for the fun of it

I am sure that the effect does not escape you. Is the red lady “a picture in his mind”, or is it “something he looks for or desire?” Or something quite different, maybe. I will leave you do decide. Under any circumstance this insert has altered the meaning content of this image, would you not say? It is an example of Barthes trick effects in photography as a way to manipulate communication content.

Copyright 2003: Knut Skjærven. 

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Buy the English translation of Barthes’ work. Follow the link and support the site:
Image-Music-Text

As mentioned in a recent post I will elaborate on Barthes’ connotation procedures in separate posts. Here comes then the second of Barthes’ procedures: pose.

There are, according to Barthes, 6 areas of procedures in total. For Barthes’ wording you have to read his article. Reference is made at the bottom of the post.

2. Pose

Barthes: “… it is the very pose of the subject which prepares the reading of the signifieds of connotation: youthfulness, spirituality, purity”. He says this in a discussion on a specific portrait of President John F. Kennedy from the beginning of the sixties.

Obviously a person’s, or an object’s, pose can change the meaning of a shot. Particularly on the connotative level. Does it change the impression if the person looks happy or sad, if he/her smiles or not, if he/she looks distantly up in the air, or keep eyes towards the ground? Of course it does, as do any other compositional change in the picture.

Pose then, or in more general terms, composition, is a connotation procedure. It is one of the element that you can use for inducing a specific set of meanings in a photographic message.

Here is an example. In this shot the denotative elements are the two young people, the glass cylinder, the large window in the back of the image, the brick walls, et cetera. By placing themselves, as they did, around the glass cylinder the young couple added greatly to the content of this shot by inducing playfulness, joy, happiness just to mention a few such attributes. These are the picture’s connotations. For more on connotations (and denotations) you could go here.

Copyright 2008: Knut Skjærven. 

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Buy the English translation of Barthes’ work. Follow the link and support the site:
Image-Music-Text

As mentioned in a recent post I will elaborate on Barthes’ connotation procedures in separate posts. Here comes the first one starting with Barthes’ third procedure: objects.  There are, according to Barthes in his article, 6 areas for procedures in total.

3. Objects

Objects in themselves have connotative content. Barthes uses an example with a book case that might connote intellectualism. He states that “The interest lies in the fact that the objects are accepted inducers of associations of ideas (book-case = intellectual).. ” They can also work as symbols, he argues.

Some other examples; when you see an image of a big man in a close up, such a shot might connote power or dominance. When you have an image of a tiny woman that might connote fragility or fright. Obviously all object have second meaning connotations moving from neutral (in a neutral shot) to excessive in a more deliberately composed photograph.

Take a look at the “object” below. It is the rear of a car, but not any other car. It is the rear of a Bugatti Veyron at display in Berlin. Depending on the degree of car enthusiast you may or may not be, this picture will connote extreme wealth, extreme speed and excessive luxury to you. If you are not into cars at all, you might accept that this is indeed a stylish object of some class.

It is pretty clear from this picture (to me anyway), that images indeed contain second level contents; read connotations. This image does not only denote: rear of a car, but it strongly connote things like wealth and luxury, as well. 

For more on connotations (and denotations) you could go here.

Copyright 2008: Knut Skjærven.  

 Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Buy the English translation of Barthes’ work. Follow the link and support the site:
Image-Music-Text