RESEARCH POINT: SEMIOTICS
Context and narrative (Short, 2011)
I have read this chapter before during Context and narrative. It was interesting to re-read this 2 years later, these are points that I find salient now:
Chapter 4 Narrative:
- Visual narrative techniques are used as punctuation to create frames of reference and context for an audience to give meaning and coherence – a thread to follow or a concept.
- In photography narrative may not follow the traditional beginning middle and end, it may look to the past or future, be cyclical, make cross references or be in just one image
- The artist citing their method of production is important to convey their intention The way images are presented gives subtle visual clues to an audience and so it should be considered: Is it a typology, an installation that requires interactivity, a photo essay, a sequential story or standalone images.
- The size of an image in a series can be visual punctuation
- Remember the role of the of the camera as the eye of the viewer, which can be from another perspective
- The narrative within a photograph can be drawn from all components of it and breaking it down into these components to help think about what you ae showing an audience.
- Photographers that construct images photographers like Gregory Crewdson are deciding what to show an audience
- I was interested to learn that many well-known single images have been extracted from larger bodies of work. Short suggests that because these emerge from immersion in a subject overtime, they often convey the essence of the photographer’s intention; their personal response combined with the meaning in a scene that are brought together I a moment.
In summary Short suggests considering when presenting images:
• Will the audience see all the images at once?
• Do you want them to follow an identifiable sequence?
• Will some pictures take more prominence than others?
• Do you need a lead picture that sums up the intention?
• Do you want to use visual punctuation? (size or shape)
“Ultimately the aim of narrative technique is to provide or anchor meaning and coherence for the image and its audience” (Short, 2011:109).
Chapter 5 Signs and symbols
The study of signs is calls semantics and can be used to illuminate visual language and the context of these must also be considered. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) Swiss linguist and American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) developed models of semantics on which much of this terminology is based:
- Symbol: something that represents something else.
- Signifier (the form a sign takes)
- Signified The concept represented)
- Studium (general interest in the photograph)
- Punctum (that which arrests attention)
- Representamen (the form that the sign takes)
- Interpretant (the sense made of the sign)
- Object (to which the sign refers)
The photographer may introduce these accidently or in a constructed way. A signifier can be:
A symbol – is something that represents something else
Indexical– physically or causally linked to the signifier: smoke, footprints
An Icon – resembling the signifier
Signs and symbols can be constructed by the photographer as they respond to their environment. Practical techniques such as aperture, shutter speed and lighting can be used to bring signs and symbols into photography.
Short suggests these points should be considered with signs and symbols:
- What is their function?
- Are you introducing a new twist on an existing sign or symbol?
- How do you introduce the meaning of the symbol?
- Is it a reoccurring motif or symbol?
- Should the audience have prior knowledge of the meaning of the sign or symbol?
- How are you framing their context?
- Using any dynamics such as juxtaposition?
The pace and flow of narrative can be orchestrated by signs and symbols either significant in an image or a looser link in the overall visual language between images (Short, 2011:141).
References:
Open College of the Arts (2014) Photography 2: Documentary-Fact and Fiction (Course Manual). Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.
Short, M. (2011) Creative Photography: Context and Narrative. Lausanne: AVA Publishing
Photography 2: Documentary 