How we read photographs

Today I have been reading Graham Clarke’s The Photograph and found the chapter 'How to read a photograph' particularly interesting.  As I have long suspected there is more to a photograph than initially meets the eye. 

Roland Barthes (1915-1980), the philospopher, cultural and literary theorist, suggests there is a distinction between the relative meaning of the different elements in a photograph – the denotative and the connotative.  Denotative is the literal significance of an element in a photograph i.e a chair, a car, a person.  Connotative is a second level of meaning “its signs are gestures, attitudes, expressions, colours and effects endowed with certain meanings by the practice of a certain society." They are codes and visual language that reflect the wider process of importance in a photograph. 

Barthes also establishes a further distinction in how we read a photograph.  There are two distinct factors in our relationships to the image.  The studium suggests a passive response to the image and the punctum allows for a critical reading. 

One of the most interesting images to look at in this context is Identical Twins by Diane Arbus in which seemingly identical twins turn out to be anything but on closer scrutiny.