How is Meaning Constructed in Images - Essay Example

Some believe that images are expressive, separate and independent of second communication system but work through it. Others say that visual and verbal meanings are different and determinacy in visual is deficient so here verbal communication is better. When they are put together, how do they both work with each other and whats the relation between them? Verbal meanings totally differ from visual meanings but practically there are very few images without any verbal means or text. We commonly surround the images with words which is helpful in specifying and stabilizing the interpretations of specific images, about 35 years ago, Roland Barthes wrote about it and said that all images imply, underlay their floating chain of signifiers and the reader is able to select some of them and ignore the remaining that is they are polysemous. Dysfunction raises a question of polysemy. To fix the floating chain of signified different techniques are applied so that fear of uncertain signs can be encountered and minimized, these techniques mainly involve linguistic or verbal messages (Marchese, 1995). Institutional apparatus that chooses and provides text and images to the common public includes captions, labels, placards, guidebooks, brochures and fliers and they all come in linguistic messages. Curators, teachers and editors use these tools. Institutions and practices that strengthen the use of images as well as their interpretations also use the same tools as their major part. It means that image in a textbook seems to illustrate and support the meanings of the information written in the text of that textbook. When we see an image in an advertisement, the first thing which comes in our mind is that it is there to be helpful in selling the product by looking at someone enjoying possession and consumption of that particular product. Therefore we have some special standards of text and images and their correlation of explanation by text and illustration by images (Marchese, 1995). For the same reason, discussions are based on the images in textbooks and advertising, by the observers of the semiotics of images. To advertise any image is problem creating and elusive, Barthes says in "Rhetoric of the image”. Stable platform of advertisements and textbooks were used by Günter Kress and Theo van Leeway to build their visual semiotics and it is a complete and valid way to proceed except some standard cases which put down the signifying potential will be ignored. Conceptualist artists have worked a lot to turn the standard canons and to discover the chances and possibilities of tension and struggle between the two ways of communication i.e. visual and verbal means, in the past few decades (Wright, 2008). The viewer can stand outside the depicted human scenes allowed by the standard written notes of instructions and advertisements. According to Kress and van Leaden, the people either looks at the viewer and in a sense ask for recognition, acknowledgement, response, or they do not look at the viewer and view as third persons. Artists and critics raised the question for the innocence of the beholder and of the artists too, for the same purpose, in the recent decades. Demands and offers become complex in a hurry situation, when we think according to gaze and pose (Wright, 2008). Language performs the role of a medium with determinate and defined meanings, to which the visual meaning contrasts in Bathes and our discussions. The images are mute or silent and they do not say anything about the world, do not hurt anybody and do not use destructive manners, and for the same reason modernist poets value images a lot. The difference is suggested by Bathes and noticed by Victor Burgin, that images and texts have signifying rhetoric arrangements but no syntax to articulate their parts and to bind them together (Wright, 2008). There are still many parallels and similarities between the two media, although the pictures and text languages are quite different from each other. Text and pictures are composed of parts or bits of images or words arranged on a surface. Various shapes in a picture wash flow and blend with one another and with the background of that picture and they do not look similar to the words unless they have crisp edges like Dada photomontage attracted the term word and arranged them like syntax (Bierut et al, 1994). As in the example of Dawn Ades’ Photomontage Hannah Hooch says about this popular piece that scattered elements, photographs and scraps of text are scattered, and show no relation among them ,on the surface as if they are the words on a page(p.30)but a page with words on it but they do not make even a sentence. Any montage like this is flat means there is no topology of concepts, not arranged into any special order by perspective but there is only the topology of touching, separating and special orders. The effect of size and overlapping is very much difficult to explain (Aspers, 2005). These placements are important principally by contrast, oxymoron, antithesis and incongruity but not by the role played by them grammatically in sentences. Artistic patterns of words signify the arrangements and composition of the parts (the figures of classical rhetoric words) in contrast to the grammar composition or the logical formulae. Rhetorical signification is clearly polysemous which means that words are arranged in a list as to pass the plenitude even at too much, can be called epitrochasm, or equal, summarized and detailed attention or the dominant ordering. Therefore, we can also say that the images can do the same (Aspers, 2005). Rhetorical arrangements of figure are a secondary signifying system for languages. A photograph is quite enough and, can say, is more than the verbal explanations, as long as the meanings of conveying the information about the objects in space (usually diagrams are drawn to convey the meanings). If the part edges are blurry or overlaid or merge or mix into one another, then the figures of identity, duality, amphibole, metaphor come in the mind. Kress and van Leaden give the name lowered or less realistic modality to the graphics that makes the edges blurry and which move away the representation from the actual and physical objects, they are asked to make the schematic diagram of the present world, future world and the idealistic world, roughly (Beuzzi, 2001). In these two pages, the containers of the spray cleanser on the right side show the struggle for markets and finally show the end result. These two spray cleansers are photographed with bright colors in the dark or jet black background and it is the text which is supporting them, this is what called hyper-real modality by Kress and van Leeuwen, which focuses sensual pleasure of the consumer typically in the advertisements related to eating and drinking. When we relate and compare these two pages with their statements to solve the basic conflict between the two in the free market, we come to know that understatements or under-representations have great affect on the free market of the cleansers. Bruce Springsteen’s “57 channels and nothin’on” explains that market economy of the late consumer capitalist is hidden by the consumer choice about cleansers. In the second page, there are two packs of the cigarettes (sale in Japan) and their position shows the incomplete victory of the market of morals, the two texts are full of peace and hope- which urges for the fantastic and fabulous wordings (Beuzzi, 2001). The Templeton’s agent words are truly translated by the graphics which reduce the large phrases to their practical situations in the routine life as:”the immoral commodity choices are packed in the positive and nice wordings by the morals of capitalist marketing”, people are so backward that they with hold assent. In the display from Wired, the graphics make a counter statement. The first image explains the classic scene of art appreciation which shows many different things among which the learned and refined connoisseur Mr.Berenson looks fixedly at the statue of the almost undressed woman. We are standing at the back of that lady and can safely observe the Branson gaze (the Chime memorial website) at the body that does not match with the Branson gaze (this is Antonio Canoga’s Paola Borges as the goddess of love and she is looking at the bottom of her couch) (Beuzzi, 2001). The second image is digitally organized and help us to gaze on the scene of gazing, again, by looking at her legs and interpreting the overall view of gazing. A peephole or a classic oval framing can be clearly suggested by the scene. We can not see her facial expressions to read the situation about her collection of women pictures. This suggests her lovely and loving fantasies (Beuzzi, 2001). The contrasting relation of text and graphics is reviewed by Victor Burgin in his 1970’s political work: the image shown here is taken from an advertisement and the social theory is written on it. A famous possession was done in the exhibition of the contemporary in Newcastle. Some publicity posters were demanded by the Arts Council and the Burgin gave 200 copies of possession which were then pasted on the Newcastle streets for publicity (Reichert et al, 2005). Burgin believed that the images and texts have the opposite affects and contrast in catching the gaze and fastening the thoughts. Afterwards, the researchers got that many viewers remembered the implications of those posters rather than what they said. Burgin then for a few years, published large images with the large texts, these texts were usually consisted more than a 100 words . The effects of contradictions of late capitalist consumer society were sometimes professional and preachy and sometimes suggestive, enigmatic and tensely ironic, like image of a Berlin peep shown on a circular stage, where he quotes Panoptic on Foucault’s explanation (Reichert et al, 2005). An article to Helmut Newton by Urns Stealing many pictures pasteurized by Newton, while photographing the nudes, Newton pasteurized himself too discussed in selections of his photographic work. Victor Burgin pays full attention semiotic ally and psychoanalytically towards one of them(“Self Portrait with Wife June and Models,”, in Paris in 1981). A textbook of Bethesda semiotic analysis is the stating point for Burgin (Firstly he denotation was done means non-coding the explanation of the whole scene and then the turn of connotation comes including codes of culture, raincoats associations, FM spiked heels, pinup postures, rhetorical patterns of antithesis and continuously repeating that), then he turns the direction towards Laura Mulley’s work in feminist psychoanalytical arguments(and finally in the direction of personal message given by the image) (Reichert et al, 2005). Burgin and Steal totally ignore that how does the Newton opens the scene and other affects of glamour photography in his whole work. We can imagine several questions by looking at the scene, the main questions arose are; Newton’s wife is examining the model like a casting director, so what would she be thinking? It looks as if she is about to face him to be ordered, will she move towards him? Newton positions people so what he is thinking about and dons a raincoat? He shortened himself, why? What his wife is thinking? Is the Vogue Paris Studio is properly used? The model is paid by whom? When will we finish that, who is that other model, what is she doing over there, what is she waiting for? This all clearly depicts that this picture is working oppositely to the Steel’s title: the visual attraction of love making attempts to bracket or hide the exposed personal or material relationships (Reichert et al, 2005). The August 1999 edition of wired, shows this advertisement for the digital camera of Agfa. Broadly speaking, it is very conventional, easy and effective to sell the camera to increase the possession of having the camera by the sex appeal. But this only happens when one uses the camera, not only by displaying it- it is a twist (Aspers, 2005). The picture relates you to the moment when you see the woman in the viewfinder of the camera and shoot the woman while she is standing in the window of the second floor (that’s why the window casement is tipped inward at the top), in the act of shooting she is clearly looking at you, approves your ciboria mien and gives you a flying kiss. The important sign in this picture of this kind of interpretation is the viewfinder look which is given by vertical pinching slightly appear to be in the middle of the picture, slight vertical pinching here refers to the direction of the edges which are curved inward at the bottom and the top and then outward (Aspers, 2005). Sometimes the products ,as well as certain attitudes and values ,are sold by using sexuality in the advertisements to the consumers. Messeges received from the following or similar to the following ads are: Caving Klein; the innocence is sexy, sexy virgin, depiction of young people in poses that provoke. Versace; showing that the pain and violence is linked to sexiness and glamour by featuring Madonna. Gasoline Jeans wear and Escape Perfume; It is the nature that woman enjoys the domination of men sexual and the end result is sex. Budweiser Beer; women intends to sell herself and sexiness which means that whenever you buy a product, you will get the woman for free. Wonderbra; when we look at or play with women they appear to be absolute sexual objects, it is naughty but at the same time legal too (Reichert et al, 2005) The advertisements use women more often as the Goddess of love than men, traditionally. Though, for the last few years, we see the advertisements of the young men giving the poses in the similar manner, though; we still want to see sexy women in the advertisements. This is very clear from the ads in which the couples are shown together and in which the men and women are used to sell the same product. Throughout we are work with and use the modern art as de-automatization as we try to make the normal basis of day to day viewing consciously and normally, by the violation of two types of conventions, one of them is practical graphics and the other is appreciation of classical art. Conflict between the verbal and visual meanings, the picture, on the rhetorical signification issues, interpretations are made and checked using regular and transportable principles, text and figures of rhetoric forms, without any hope for syntax-semantics that map threads onto the logical forms. A specific image de-automatizes, as the common point appears to be truly evident, it makes is own ways and works in many directions which directly affect its function and use in advertisements. Therefore, these are not the actual images and ways which signify what is practically found in the working images. Works cited: Aspers, P. 2005. Markets in Fashion A Phenomenological Approach. Routledge. Beuzzi, S. 2001. Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis. Routledge. Bierut, M. et al. 1994. Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design. Allworth Press. Marchese, F. T. 1995. Understanding Images: Finding Meaning in Digital Imagery. TELOS Reichert, T. et al. 2005. Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media And Marketing. Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc Inc. Wright, T. 2008. Visual Impact: Culture and the Meaning of Images. Berg Publishers. Read More