Assignments: Batch One: Assignment 1

Illustrate and critically discuss the transformative role of some of the key codes which we draw upon in producing and interpreting photographs.

Guidance

For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module, see the general criteria.

What Key Features Do I Look For?

  • Familiarity with relevant texts
  • Evidence - the stronger the better
  • Argument - coherent and balanced
  • Theoretical discussion - relation to relevant theories
  • Understanding of relevant concepts
  • Reflexivity - reflections on methodology
  • Examples - insightfully analysed
  • Style - readability and effective presentation

Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text (not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher. Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this department, click here.

Advice for this particular assignment: The most relevant lecture for this topic is Lecture 4: Codes.

Roland Barthes famously observed that photography seems at first sight to be 'a message without a code'. Since this has been widely misinterpreted what did he mean by this? In Peirce's terms, photography as a medium is primarily and definitively indexical rather than simply iconic: it is hardly an accident when photographs 'resemble' what they depict ('OMG - look how much my snapshot looks like the thing I pointed the camera at - it's uncanny!'), and although photos can be iconic indexes they don't even necessarily resemble their referents (consider under- and over-exposed photes, oddly frozen action shots, and viewer reactions such as 'that's not a very good likeness' or 'the mountain seemed so much bigger'). The indexicality of the medium does not mean that transformative codes are not involved. Which codes are specific to the medium and which are not confined to photography?

Consider the semiotic codes involved in producing photographs and also those involved when viewers seek to make sense of them. For instance, these codes include (but are far from confined to) the following:

Even visual forms of communication require codes which are largely shared by all parties, but do viewers and photographers apply codes differently? The famous American photographer Ansel Adams declared that 'you don't take a photograph, you make it.' In what ways does a photograph 'translate' the reality it represents? Most obviously, of course, it is smaller, bounded, stationary and in two dimensions (all of which deserve comment), but in what other ways does it do so? Specify as fully as possible the various ways in which even unedited photographs unavoidably transform the phenomena they appear merely to record. To do this you need to imagine that you have never encountered photographs before - in exactly what ways are they different from the things they represent? Consider a variety of kinds of photography (such as snapshots, ads and photojournalism) and offer some specific examples in which you analyse in detail the codes employed. Check your own application of codes against that of others to avoid privileging your own interpretation. Demonstrate your understanding of relevant semiotic issues and concepts.

Note also that this is an assignment for which the inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is essential. Remember to include a list labelled either Figures or Image sources after your list of References. You might find it useful to include and critically discuss several different photographs of 'the same thing'. Do not get sidetracked into discussing the various ways in which photographs can be edited.

Only some of the books on the suggested reading are explicitly semiotic and you may need to recast their insights within a semiotic framework.

Some suggested reading

Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!


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