010
Visual Semiotics and Photography
In the 1970s, reflections on semiotics, rooted in structuralist philosophy (1), predominated across various fields of knowledge. The concepts of semiotics applied to linguistics were not effective for studying photography, as the iconic sign cannot be synthesised in the same manner as the linguistic sign. However, certain components of the sign-object relationship (icon, index, and symbol) (2) can be employed to analyse an image.
At this stage, as a student studying visual semiotics and visual narrative, I took photographs to practise visual metaphor and examine iconic signs. Recognising that visual language was not a universal language either, as it relied on the viewer of the photograph (3) , images were sourced from the inner gaze to illustrate aspects such as the contradictions of situations or the uncertainty of the paths to pursue.
Keywords
References
Texts
- 1. Eco, U. (1974) . La estructura ausente: Introducción a la semiotica. Barcelona: Editorial Lumen. P. 29. (Títol original: La struttura assente)
“Para Saussure el signo es la unión de un significado con un significante y por ello, si la semiòtica fuera la ciencia que estudia los signos, quedarían excluidos de este campo muchos fenómenos que actualmente se llaman “semióticos” o son de su competencia”.
- 2. Dubois, P. (1986). El acto fotográfico: De la Representación a la Recepción. Barcelona: Paidós Comunicación. (Títol original: L’acte photographique)
- 3. 008 El minimalisme conceptual en la fotografia / Conceptual minimalism in photography
Images
- Student reflections on the semiotics of the image.