Graham Clarke – The Photograph: How Do We Read

This article about the basics of understanding photographs made me rethink my former opinion that a great image is only about the aesthetics. It is just like literature, we have to understand the context to understand the real message.

NOTES:

The image is much a reflection of the ‘I’ of the photographer as it is of the ‘eye’ of the camera.

Denotative: literal meaning of a photo.

Connotative: second meaning of a photo.

Barthes (in Camera Lucida) 2 distinctions

Studium: passive response to a photograph’s appeal

Punctum: critical reading of a photograph

Once we have discovered our punctum we become, irredeemably, active readers of the scene.