Page 81 - Decoding Culture

74 D E C O D I N G C U L TURE

connoted message is certainly coded, understood through the fil­
ters of our various symbolic orders. So we see the replication of
reality denoted by the image, but we understand connotative mean­
ings in consequence of the interaction of that image with cultural
codes. Y e t photography commonly presents itself as a 'mechanical
analogue' without a second-order message; a newspaper photo­
graph, for example, is pure denotation. Or is it?
Barthes' suggestion is that the claim of photographs to the
denotative, to 'objectivity', is misleading: a naturalized product of
'common sense'. In the act of reading a photograph we relate it to
a body of signs, and it is in this process that what begins as a mes­
sage without a code is assimilated by its readers to a connotative
system. 'Connotation, the imposition of second meaning on the
photographic message proper, is realized at the different levels of
production of the photograph (choice, technical treatment, fram­
ing, lay-out) and represents, finally, a coding of the photographic
analogue' (ibid: 20). How this is managed is, for Barthes, a central
question for semiology, and one with which he had been grappling
for some years. Hence, of course, the famous example from his
first (1957) attempt to think through his views, at this stage without
use of the terms denotation and connotation. Let me quote it at
length, since it so clearly embodies his central concerns.

On the cover [of P a ris-Match , a young Negro in a French uniform
I
is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tri­
colour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or
not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great
Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faith­
fully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the
detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this
Negro in serving his so-called oppressors. I am therefore again
fa ced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself
already f o rmed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the
French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of

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