about decoding photographs or from the photo to its meaning.
This section is intended to help readers to use photographs better and more consciously as a means of communication. In practice, there are two tasks. The First is to select the photos matching a message from a collection. The second is to stage a picture for an intended message.
For this purpose, insights of social semiotics are used, which investigates how people, understand signs dependent on situation, society and culture. Social semiotics is a branch of semiotics. Semiotics deals with the meaning and decoding of signs.
The word sign is used here as something that points to something else, that means something else or stands for something else. An example is the word "cat", which refers to an animal, namely a cat, but is not a cat, instead it is a word. Likewise, the photo of a cat is not a cat, but it does contain an image of a cat and thus a sign of a cat. If the cat is the main subject of the photo, the photo itself is a sign for a cat.
Photographs are signs and contain signs.
Analysis of a picture
The photograph above is a public domain photo, downloaded from pixabay.
In the photo, a lot of people immediately recognize a bride and a groom. The bride stands in front and forms a heart with her hands. The groom stands behind her, embracing her waist with both arms. The groom also forms a heart by embracing the hands of the bride.
The heart symbolizes the love of the couple. The photo can stand as a sign for the concept of "love marriage" and in fact it is often used this way on the Web, eg. by restaurants recommending themselves as a place for weddings.
Images representing concepts are called conceptual images. People in conceptual images are not interesting as individuals, they do not represent themselves, but they represent interchangeably a concept. In the picture the persons represent the concepts "Bride" and "Groom" or together the concept "bridal couple". Since the depicted persons appear in the picture only as prototypes, they are depicted deprived of their face - and thus of their individuality.
Conceptual images with people often have a narrative character. Narrative pictures tell a story. Their hallmark is that the objects they contain interact. People in pictures can interact through looks, gestures, postures, countenance, touches, actions.
An image search for "bridal couple, hands, heart" on the Web shows that the heart symbol is also often formed in two halves, one half by bride and the other by the groom . This gesture implies equality in the partnership. In the preceding photo, the enclosing of the woman's hands by the man, can symbolically be interpreted as protective. However, it can equally well be interpreted as restrictive and oppressive and trigger negative emotions in women.
Another detail that does not make the preceding picture the ideal sign of heterosexual love marriage are the long finger nails of the groom . Europeans and Americans could deduce that the groom is not a man. But the picture has been taken by a Vietnamese photographer from Hanoi and long thumb nails are not as uncommon among men in Asia as they are in Europe or America. They can be a sign that you do not have to work physically.
Although it is easy to read a meaning out of a photograph, it is difficult to estimate the multitude of possible receptions of a picture due to the lack of clarity of pictorial statements. It is not easy to design a picture carrying an intended message unequivocally.
It is noticeable that in the picture head and legs are missing. At the center are the hands of the participants - a reminiscence of Albrecht Dürer's "Praying Hands". The lack of heads signals that this is not a particular couple, but a concept, such as the concept of love-based marriage. The omission of body parts reduces possible receptions. The picture is reduced to its essential statement.
The fact that the couple is a bridal couple can only be recognized by their wedding dress, enhanced by the bridal veil that can be seen in the background. The sleeve of the black jacket and the white shirt do not deny this. But alone would not be enough as a sign for a bridal couple.
One can easily recognize several signs: human hands, arms, torso of a woman, bracelet, wristwatch, bridal gown, suit jacket, shirt, a hand-shaped heart.
All signs except the heart are iconographic signs, so-called icons. An icon (Greek picture) is a sign similar to the object it refers to.
The heart formed by the hands is a symbol. The shape is not really similar to the real shape of a heart. Symbols are signs that are arbitrarily assigned to the object to which they refer. Other forms would be possible as a symbol of the heart. A form becomes a symbol when it is socially agreed upon. Those shaping the symbol with their hands know that those who seeing it, recognize it as a heart. This only works if the symbol has been learned.
However, it is not enough to recognize the form as a symbol for a heart in order to assign the desired meaning to the image. In addition, beholders need to know that the heart metaphorically stands for affection, feeling and love. The heart as an organ is an object that is linked to the abstract concept of love, and thus the abstract concept of love can also be represented concretely.
In addition to icon and symbol, there is another type of sign namely the index. An index is a sign that appears in conjunction with an object and therefore indicates an object. An example is smoke, which is an index for fire. In the picture above, the bridal dress is an index for a bride, as the woman represented by her torso would otherwise not be recognizable as a bride.
Photos can be divided into narrative and conceptual photos. A photo about that the beholder can tell a story is a narrative photo. If an action is shown in the photo or the signs in the photo interact, then this is a hint for a narrative photo. Conceptual photos represent a concept (in the sense of an idea).
In the picture above, there are signs that refer to two people who interact via arms and hands. Beholders can easily make up a story for the picture. The photo can therefore also be called a narrative photo.
However, it also has conceptual features and could stand as a picture for the concept: love marriage. A hint for conceptual images is that objects are represented as instances of classes.
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