Semiotics of Photography
— On tracing the index
By Göran Sonesson,
Lund University, 1989
Report 4 from the Project
“Pictorial meanings in the society of information”

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Part III. Photography – Tracing the index
2
Contents
Introduction
4
III.1. Semiotic approaches to photographic specificity 6
III.1.1. A short history of photographic semiotics
7
III.1.2. A note on the four methods of semiotics and the three
approaches to photography
32
III.1.3. On the specific sign character of photography
39
III.1.3.1. The nature/culture debate in photography
40
III.1.3.2. Introduction to a theory of traces. Aspects of indexicality
in the work of Vanlier
49
III.1.3.3. From the general theory of indexicality to the photographic
index. A critique of Dubois
61
III.1.3.4. The imprint of a likeness. Reflections on Schaeffer´ s theory
70
III.1.4. On some marginal indices of photography
82
III.2. The text analytical way to photography
90
III.2.1. Floch reading Cartier-Bresson and beyond
90
III.2.1.1. Three versions of the plastic layer
94
III.2.1.2. A few icons for indexicality
104
III.2.1.3. Concluding remarks
111
III.2.2. On a self-portrait by Florence Henri
112
III.2.2.1. Man Ray caught in the act
112
III.2.2.2. Plastic analysis according to two schemes
116
III.2.2.3. The mirror of iconico-indexical analysis
122

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Part III. Photography – Tracing the index
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III.2.2.4. Conclusion on layers and versions
128
III.3 Some observations on photography and
postmodernity
130
Bibliography
134

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Just some more semiotic bullshit on photography. My tolerance for this
bullshit is basically zero. The US MFA system...


Part III. Photography – Tracing the index
4
Part III.
Semiotics of photography - On tracing
the index
Introduction
In the first part of this treatise, we suggested that semiotics, apart
from fixing the
nature of the pictorial sign, should be able to tell us something about
the way signs
may differ, while still being picture signs: how, for instance, the
photographic sign
is diffferent from the drawing and the painting. With this aim in view,
we have been
looking at the impressing number of analyses produced so far inside
pictorial
semiotics, trying to establish, first, to what extent the
presuppositions of the
analyses, as embodied in the models, differ between the diverging
picture types;
and second, how far the results of the analyses are heterogeneous, even
when the
model is identical to begin with