CHENYUE ZHANG
Nowadays, it is a digital world which supersaturated by the vast array of visual images. It is significant for us to critically explore the ideologies and power of images as well as examine how images were used in combination with the contents to anchor and complicate meanings. The following article is my reflection on the reading of visual analysis.
In the article Image-music-text, Roland Barthes proposed that people like to extract meaning from knowledge and people like symbols because they are clear. According to the Barthes (1993), photography is an analogue of reality that describes what individuals see of the image. In addition, photography is also a trace of history as evidentiary. Roland Barthes identified that images can be checked the significant of denotation and connotation. Besides, he analyzed the anchoring and relay functions of news and advertising images that how the morality and ideology of a society are invested.
Moreover, what touched me the most was Roland mentioned in the article Camera lucida: Reflections on photography —— Studium and Punctum. He described his own perspective of specific photographs. The feeling of viewing photos is extremely private. Then, it is impossible for everyone to reach a consensus under the constraints and guidance of a certain standard, whether it is technical, aesthetic, or cultural significance. Life needs the vitality that we need to reduce the need for so-called common understanding, and appreciate the difference. Roland talks about “watching” life through photography in the text. It is valuable for us to find and maintain the “personal punctum” and also respect the personality punctum of others. Furthermore, Roland made an interesting point that the true meaning of photography is “this existed” and he linked the topic of death as well as photography.
To conclude, Roland’s thinking about photography had undergone a transition from semiotic structuralism to phenomenology. Many of the points he mentioned in the book are not limited to the object of discussion of photography, but break through to a larger cultural field, especially in the relationship between culture and society, which is thought-provoking.
Reference:
Barthes, R. (1977). Image-music-text. Macmillan.
Barthes, R. (1981). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. Macmillan.
Barthes, R. (1993). Rhetoric of the Image. na.
MCS group 2 