A photographic image has the appearance of simplicity. It is a representation of visible reality; it informs us directly and without ado. Unlike written language, it seems that everyone can understand a photograph, for one can clearly see what is depicted. However, appearances are deceptive. In practice, it turns out that understanding photography is far more complicated. The science that makes serious attempts to analyze photography is called semiology.

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When De Saussure, a Swiss linguist, gave lectures on linguistics in the first years of the 20th century, he could not have foreseen that - many years later - these would become the source of a new philosophical development. To gain a better understanding of the study of language, De Saussure developed several schemes which were used far beyond the field of linguistics. For photography, semiology or the study of the sign (semeion being Greek for sign) is of special importance. According to De Saussure, language consists of signs. Each sign has two aspects: the concept or thought and the sound. We call such a sign a word, as a word is a connection between a sound and an idea. Subsequently, De Saussure replaced the concept or thought with 'signifie' (signified, or meaning) and the sound with 'signifiant' (signifier). We can thus define a sign as a combination or meeting point of signifier and signified, in which the signifier refers to the signified.

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Therefore, in the case of language, the sound refers to a certain thought or a certain object. As the connection between a thought and a sound isn’t made on logical grounds, De Saussure called it arbitrary. The language sign is created solely by social convention. Quite by chance, a horse is called 'horse’ in English and 'cheval' in French. Conferring a meaning on a signifier (e.g. a sound) is therefore a cultural act. According to De Saussure, this made language suitable to serve as a model for a general semiology. Besides meaning, he also discussed the value of a word. By this, he meant the extra meaning a word receives within a network of words. In his posthumously published work Cours de linguistique Générale, De Saussure writes: “That which is important in a word is not the sound itself, but the phonetic differences which make it possible to distinguish the word from others. In fact, language is nothing other than a system of differences.” *1

The concept of differences opened the road to structuralism. The structuralists' starting point is that the field they study, whether it is anthropology or psychology, is a structure in which the elements receive their value or meaning by the position they take in that structure. In other words, they study the sign in its context; this is a valuable concept in the study of the meaning of photography.

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Smoke and fire

De Saussure wasn't the only founder of semiology. Around the same time, the American philosopher Charles Pierce developed a much more general semiology which, however, remained little-known in French circles. This explains the enormous preoccupation with language that is so typical of French structuralists, perhaps the most important problem with which the semiology of photography has to address today. Pierce distinguished three kinds of signs: the icon, the index, and the symbol.

· The iconic sign shows an analogy or resemblance to reality. An example of an icon is the photograph, for it depicts reality in a mechanical and, thus, precise way.
· The index is a far more complicated sign; it refers but doesn't point out. An example of an indexical sign is smoke. When we see smoke, we deduce that there is fire. However, indices can also occur within iconic signs, such as when we see a luxurious interior on a photograph, it can refer to wealth.
· Finally, symbolic signs are created by a fixed convention, as was the case with language signs. Symbolic signs can, of course, also occur in iconic signs.

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Existentialism

Semiology can be called ‘the methodological nucleus of structuralism’ that emerged in and around Paris in the sixties. Existentialism, with its emphasis on the individual, freedom, and consciousness, was past its prime and moved aside for a way of thinking which diametrically opposed it. The structuralists, all influenced by De Saussure, no longer believed in the unicity of man, but considered him an element in a greater whole: the structure. Consciousness and freedom made way for 'signifie' and 'signifiant'. Whether it is Levi- Strauss, who studies primitive peoples, or Lacan, who dives into the subconscious, all start out from structure as a system of communication. Within this system, signs can be discovered which create meaning through their mutual configurations. Umberto Eco’s statement: “To communicate is to use the whole world as a semiotic apparatus.” *2 is typical of this. The tendency to analyze their object of study to such an extent that hardly any of it remains is characteristic of structuralists. Not unjustly, they have been accused of a certain coolness and excessive intellectualism.

‍Message without code

Roland Barthes was the first to write about photography from a structuralist viewpoint. When he published his Message photographique (in: Communications 1/1961), no work had yet been done in this field. In this essay, Barthes confines himself to commercial and journalistic photography, a limitation he completely drops in his ‘non-semiological’ book Camera Lucida. Even so, this limitation is understandable because in no other form of photography are meanings so clearly present and analyzable.

Barthes copied Hjemslev's distinction between denotation and connotation. In the first instance, a photograph, because it is an iconic sign, is pure denotation: a complete analogy of reality. Signifier and signified coincide completely. Barthes also called denotation ‘a message without a code’, which became the most famous and - in fact - incorrect definition of photography in history. It says that the photograph is only a mechanical process and mimetic; an analogy of the reality. Barthes warns us of this definition, saying that it has every chance of being mythical.

However, photography is not confided to the codeless analogy of the reality. Besides this, there is connotation or a second message. Connotation expresses itself in the style of the photographic representation, but also in certain elements in the image.

Therefore, to analyze photography, the connotative processes are the most interesting. Barthes mentions six processes that influence the meaning. These are: trickery, pose, objects, the photogenia, aestheticism, and syntax. Respectively, they have the following content:

· Through tricks, totally new meanings can be created within the denotative area.

· The pose of a depicted person can cause a certain impression, such as power, religiosity, aggression, and so on.

· Objects in a photograph can also generate meanings which wouldn’t have been there without these objects. A picture of a soft drink with a palm beach in the background, for instance, produces connotations of freedom, vacation, and pleasure.

· By the photogenic, Barthes means all photographic aids and techniques which influence an image.

· Aesthetics is the photographic composition and artistic style.

· Finally, syntax is the combination of photographs in series or sequences. Due to a certain order, a new meaning can develop which wasn't cohesively depicted in the separate photographs.

Thus, the connotation of the photograph is the code by which the denotation (that which is pictured) is sent in a certain direction of meaning and interpretation. Barthes concludes: “We saw that the code of connotation was in all likelihood neither ‘natural’ nor ‘artificial’ but historical, or, if to be preferred, ‘cultural'.” *3

This remark is important because all photographic meaning arises from cultural signs that change in history. There is no eternal meaning in the image: the reading of the photograph is always historical, depending on the knowledge of the reader. Barthes compares reading a photograph to that of our language. Without knowing the language, we cannot understand words; without knowing the connotative codes, we cannot read a photograph.
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Theatrical effect

An example can clarify this. In the photograph Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath (1971) from the series Minemata by Eugene Smith, we see a mother holding her child while bathing. The child is crippled by mercury poisoning, a result of having eaten contaminated fish. Eugene Smith made a report of this in order to expose the poisoning case by the chemical industry. Thus, the photograph tells us about a historical reality. This is the denotative message. However, everyone who sees the photograph is struck by the drama of human suffering. The photograph is raised above its historical circumstances by its symbolic power.

Here we can distinguish at least two connotative processes mentioned by Barthes. Firstly, the aesthetic expresses itself in the chiaroscuro effect. Through the dark background, a timeless and theatrical effect is produced. The second process is the pose of the mother. Her expression is symbolic of piety and selfless love, giving the photograph similarities to religious icons. In this photograph, denotation and connotation play equally important roles. That is to say that both the factual report of a moment in history and the vision of human life are important.

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Art photography

Art photography is a different matter. Here, there are objections to a literal interpretation of the denotation. When we look at the series of clouds, Equivalents by Alfred Stieglitz, we also see a factual report of moments - namely, those in which the clouds took on certain forms. The title of the series, Equivalents, however, indicates that the pictures refer to something else; in this case the photographer's state of mind. The connotation should be given more value than denotation. The clouds' referential function is far more important than their actual representation. One might say that denotation stands entirely in the service of connotation and can thus hardly be considered an independent message. The photograph is not only an iconic sign but, because of its metaphorical character, also an indexical sign. In many forms of art photography, denotation has become the vehicle of the metaphorical meaning.

In trying to understand the different methods of interpretation of photography, we can make a distinction between the photograph as representation and the photograph as expression. The term expression refers to the act of creating something that does not exist as objective reality. A visual artwork can be an expression of, for example, a dream, an imaginary landscape, or even a political opinion. The art photographer uses the reality as a vehicle to show their inner meaning. The photographic images, misinterpreted as copies of the world, are often in fact mirrors of the mind of the artist.

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Internal meaning

Art photography must be understood as expression, making the decoding of the connotation the most important field of research. Beaumont Newhall said that the greatest challenge to a photographer is to express internal meaning via external forms. One could add that the greatest challenge to the critic is to track down the codes according to which the photograph refers to an internal meaning. If we see art photographs as visualizations of a psychological world, possibilities are opened towards understanding photography through psycho-analysis. The semiotics of film has already taken this road, as the film critic Christian Metz has shown us. Metz combined the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud with the theory of the mirror of Jacques Lacan. In his book Film Language (1968) *4 he argued that film is an illusion or a dream, opening the possibility of entering the analysis of film from a psycho-analytical approach. The semiology of photography could develop a similar theory of photography by deconstructing the reality myth.
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Notes

1.         Ferdinand De Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale, Geneve, 1915.
2.         Umberto Eco, Social life as a sign system, in: Structuralism: an introduction: Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973
3.         Roland Barthes, The Photographic Message, in : A Barthes Reader, by S. Sontag, Hill and Wang, New York, 1982
4.         Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, 1968

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