In my post on Index and Icon, I noted the idea of congruence – defined when two things are in agreement, have harmony, conformity, or correspondence – but are not mathematically identical. This seems to be a central consideration for photography, which is generally accepted as representing something real. Even in ‘constructed images’, we always seem to fall back on how …
The Index and the Icon
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was an early semiotician. His work was based on the pursuit of scientific and logical truth, and he developed his semiotics by using graphical representations (drawings and sketches). In discussing the kinds of relations that exist visually between signs and their objects, he noted three categories: an index – a reference to reality, including constituent parts of …