Roland Barthes – Photographic Message and the Photographic Paradox

I have just read the first part of the first chapter of Roland Barthes Image Music Text, the first chapter is The Photographic Message and the section read, The Photographic Paradox. I have decided to attempt to write this up in my own words, mainly for my own understanding and hopefully I have got this right, there can be a fine line between interpretation and mis-interpretation, hopefully this blog will be the former.

Barthes uses the press photograph as an analogy for this section of text, he states that there are three sections to a press photo, firstly the emission, that is the creation of the photograph and the staff involved in producing it, secondly the reception, the reader and the third and final, the channel of transmission, the actual paper, the physical copy. With the paper, the photograph can change meaning depending the ownership and for the intended reader, be it a left or right wing publication and that all press photographs are shown in conjunction with one other element, a title, be it text or a caption, this is always an accompanying element to all press photos. These two elements are viewed together however they are still separate. Text is the linguistic element and the photo is the visual aid made up of lines, texture and shading, each are equally defined yet are contiguous.

One element is very familiar and that is language but the other is still very much to be learnt about, the language of the photograph. What does the photograph transmit? It is a snapshot of reality, though reduced by proportion and colour; there is no need for a relay, a dialogue between image and supplementary text, this is accepted as reality, even if the perspective is also reduced. There is no code required to decipher the image, it is a continuous message.

Reproductions of reality do not need a code, paintings, drawings, theatre, this is on first sight, the first meaning, or initial message, the initial style of the reproduction and accepted as such. The second meaning is created from the signifier, the physical form, the representation of reality put forward by the creator; the signified is how this representation of reality is decoded and how the message is received by the viewer. So this representation is transmitted via two messages, a denoted, the physical form and the connoted, the message or signs within, however it is, rightly or wrongly, digested by the individual, collective group or indeed society as a whole. This is across all reproductions and interpreted as such, no one thing can be viewed without this duality.

However a drawing, created by human hand, cannot come across without having some sort of style visible; similarly a film has an inferred motive.

Barthes says that a photograph in its very existence is viewed as a picture and the message is clear from what it stands as, this is the first order message and because of this there is no second order message or connotation, its statement removes any further dialogue.

So the photographic paradox, according to Barthes, I think I have this right, is the co-existence of the non-coded, the photographic analogue and the coded, the art or rhetoric of a photograph, the artistic dialogue, so the coded message is created from the message without a code.

‘The photographic paradox can be seen as the co-existence of two messages…one without a code [and] the other with…it is that here the connoted (or coded) message develops on the basis of a message without a code.’ Barthes (1977, p19).

Barthes, R. (1977) Image Music Text. London : Fontana Press.