field open to individual approaches to and philo-
sophical definitions of a particular object of study.
The object of semiotic inquiry comprises anything
(for example, architecture, fashion, a film, a kinship
structure, a literary text, a musical score, a photo-
graph) that can be studied as a system of signs
dependent on cultural codes and conventions for
the constitution of sense and meaning.Semiotics and Photography
From the semiotic point of view, photography is
considered to be a specific means of communication
that carries information from a sender (the pho-
tographer) to a receiver (the viewer). In this view,
photography is never a simple reflection of the real.
Rather, it is entangled in a complex web of encoding
and decoding, construction and interpretation.
A semiotics of photography aims to exhaustively
describe the processes of signification and meaning
informing the photographic image. Approaching the
photographic image as a construction, it seeks to
understand the manner in which it functions. A
semiotics of photography askshowthe photographic
image means rather thanwhatit means. Central to
the semiotic analysis of the photographic image are
questions regarding the specificity of photography’s
codes and semiotic rules, the structures and func-
tions of the photographic message, and the precise
nature of photographic information.
The starting point for a semiotic analysis of
photography is an attempt to determine the rules
and means of construction used by the photogra-
pher in order to create a photographic image whose
meaning is as unequivocal as possible—unequivo-
cal insofar as meaning is the same for both the
sender and the receiver. Many semioticians have
singled out the importance of framing, shooting
angle, lighting selection, field depth, alteration of
prints, and the use of captions when trying to
determine how the photographer constructs an
image, making its signification and, consequently,
directing its interpretation. Semioticians agree that
the photographic image is the result of a construc-
tion that tries to anchor or constrain its meaning.
They also agree that the meaning of the photo-
graphic image is subject to the interpretative opera-
tions of both the photographer and the viewer.History of the Semiotics of Photography
Although photography has been considered a legit-
imate object of semiotic inquiry since Peirce’s cate-
gorical definitions of the sign and its relationship toits Dynamic Object, it was not until the 1960s that
semiotic investigations began to radically change
the theory of photography.
At times, Peirce identified the photographic image
as an indexical sign (a sign that is existentially,
physically tied to its object). And, at other times,
he acknowledged that there are strong grounds for
supposing that the photograph belongs to the cate-
gory of icons (signs who relate to their object by
similarity). Today, it is generally argued that the
photographic image is a semiotic hybrid: it repre-
sents iconically (by virtue of picturing the world)
and it represents indexically (by virtue of pointing
back to the world that caused it to appear as it
does). To consider the photographic image a semio-
tic hybrid is to emphasize the coincidence—and not
the mixing together—of iconic and indexical fea-
tures. It is to posit the photographic image as iconi-
cally indexical, as a sign that points by picturing.
French literary critic and semiotician Roland
Barthes was one of the leading exponents of the
semiotic study of the photographic image. He studied
photography from a semiotic point of view through-
out his life. Barthes’s principal concern was with
exploring just how the photographic image is coded
or, more specifically, what aspects of the photo-
graphic image are coded. He sustained that the
photographic image may be metaphorically called a
language, but that it is not a code in the strict sense of
the term. Distinguishing between codes of analogy,
codes of connotation, and rhetorical codes, Barthes
concluded that the photographic image signifies on
the basis of a heterogeneous complex of codes and
not a single signifying system. Investigations into the
photographic image as a polysemic message led
Barthes to explore and expand upon important
semiotic concepts and speculative instruments such
as denotation and connotation, literal and symbolic
meaning, anchorage, the analogy between natural
language (speech and writing) and visual language,
paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships, moti-
vated and unmotivated signs.
Unlike Barthes, Rene ́ Lindekens believed in the
autonomy of photographic language, defining it as
an iconic language. A great part of his semiotic
study of photography was directed toward isolating
what he called the minimal units in photographic
communication, on the plane of content and expres-
sion. Lindekens worked toward building a system-
atic theory of photographic meaning and defining a
sort of pragmatics of photographic communication.
Contemporary encounters between semiotics and
photography consider not only the structures that
operate in the photograph’s production of meaning,
but also the social and psychic formations of theSEMIOTICS