The Index and the Icon

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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 …

The Photographic Message – Roland Barthes

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I wrote about Camera Lucida at the beginning of the MA. As I concluded then, I found it rather depressing. The Photographic Message, an essay in Image Music Text, is less depressing, and perhaps more useful in providing organising principles to discuss photographs. But it is  written in that peculiar French intellectual style which almost purposefully aims to make reading difficult. …