The final part of our analytical methodology comprises the study of the enunciative level of the image. In contrast to other methodological proposals, the emphasis of our analysis falls on the study of the ways the viewpoint is articulated. Indeed, iconic analyses abound that ignore the problem of enunciation. Any photograph, insofar as it represents a slice of reality, a place from which the photograph is taken, presupposes the existence of an enunciative loo. The exploration of this question has far-reaching consequences for knowledge on the implicit ideology of the image, in the worldview it transmits. Thus, a set of concepts is put forward on which to reflect, from a physical viewpoint, on the attitude of the characters, the presence or absence of qualifiers and textual markers, enunciative transparency, enunciative mechanisms (identification vs. distancing), and the examination of the intertextual relations that the photographic image advances. The analysis of the photograph ends with a subjective global interpretation of the photographic text, that seeks to articulate the aspects analysed in the construction of a grounded reading, and if appropriate, a critical evaluation on the quality of the image studied.

As stated above, we owe a great deal to textual semiotics, which we aim to complement with the consideration of other aspects such as the study of the production conditions (author’s position; social, economic, political, cultural and aesthetic context), technology or the conditions in which the photograph is received (where it is exhibited, who is it aimed at, etc.). This approach is based on the consideration of the photograph as language, from a more operative than ontological viewpoint (Eco, 1977; Zunzunegui, 1988, 1994).

Physical viewpoint

We have seen how the frame of a photograph is the result of the selection of given space and time. Every frame corresponds to a viewpoint, to a certain way of looking, and this involves a relation between material and immaterial elements, between what is present and what is absent in the representation.

The description of the physical viewpoint consists of examining the parameters in force from where the photograph is taken, whether it is taken at the subject’s eye-level, from a high angle, or low angle, or from other positions . The choice of the height of the take, the camera angel, tends to have connotations of a peculiar “power relationship” between the representation and the enunciative instance, which determines the articulation of the viewpoint.

The existence of tilt in the frame should also be mentioned, a way in which the representation is distorted.

Attitude of the characters

The attitude of the characters may show irony, sarcasm, intensity of certain sentiments, a challenging posture, violence, etc., and provoke certain types of emotions in the viewer. These attitudes can be studied from an examination of the staging and the pose of the people in the photograph. An exploration of the characters’ lookcan also give us quite a few clues about their attitude. These looks can sometimes constitute a direct questioning from the viewer (generally in reverse angle), or towards other people in the visual range. On the other hand, a look may be directed towards the out-of-range, thus underlining its importance.

Obviously, the study of this parameter is not free from the effects of the analyst’s subjective baggage, as these attitudes may often be very ambiguous.

Qualifiers

This subsection considers the study of the ways the characters may be qualified by the enunciative instance. These qualifiers inform us how integrated the photographic subject is with his or her surroundings, and about the proximity or distancing that the enunciative instance causes in the viewer.

Transparency / suture / verisimilitude

We have already mentioned that many photographic stagings, based on the indicial conception of the photograph, frequently follow the principle of erasing all enunciative marks, which encourages their confusion with the referent, with reality itself. Photography as a medium has historically been regarded as a minor art, precisely because it is considered as a mechanism that does not involve any work on form or reality. The dominant photographic representational system (what we might call ”classical”) eliminates all evidence of mechanism itself through the suture and erasure of any clues that point to it. The closure of the meaning and the linearity of the reading are other characteristic features of classical representation that are also applicable to the area of photography.

The breach of the principle of enunciative transparencyor the erasure of enunciative marks is sometimes achieved through the presence of numerous expressive elements or compositional techniques that create an artificiosity, threaten the verisimilitude of the staging which, as it is highly marked, breaks the verisimilitude of the representation. Many of the photographs analysed (from the ITACA-UJI photograph archive, available for consultation at www.analisisfotografia.uji.es) are examples of this discourse type.

Textual markers

According to Santos Zunzunegui, the enunciator is defined as the presence of the author in the visual text itself, not to be confused with the empirical author. The tension between lines, chromatic dominants, the co-presence of centres of interest or foci of attention in the image, the tension between geometric shapes (triangular-rectangular), the presence of symmetrical or irregular compositions, the complex internal arrangement of the photographic composition, together with other elements, are some of the textual markers that inform us of the presence of the enunciator in the image. We thus speak of markers that can be recognised in the morphology of the image, which have indicial, iconic, symbolic or purely referential types of relations.

The enunciatary is also a textual subject that must not be confused with the category of receiver or physical viewer. Through analysis we can recognise the presence of both. As Zunzunegui explains (1988, pp. 82-83), “the presence of the observer can be reconstructed, and is therefore visible, even in the cases that attempt to hide the evidence from us, through two essential discursive activities”:

• aspectualisation: consists of specifying a set of aspectual categories (action, time and space) that reveal the implicit presence of the subject-observer;
• focalisation: “enables the whole tale to be understood by means of a mediator ‘viewpoint’; i.e., in our case it refers to “how” the photographic motif is shown.

Character’s look

In certain genres such as social issues and press photography, the presence of the photographer is systematically hidden by not showing the characters’ looktowards the camera. The resulting photograph shows an action, situation, relations of strength, etc., that has an effect of greater realism, which we must link with the discursive effect of the impression of reality.

The look towards the cameraby the main character is a direct challenging appeal to the viewer of the image. It is a look that sometimes underlines the presence of the technical mechanism that makes the very photographic representation possible, which breaks the photographic verisimilitude.

In genres such as the portrait, the pose usually includes the subject looking towards the camera.

Enunciation

The photograph is not therefore merely an image, but rather, and above all, the result of a deed and of know-how; it is a true iconic act; in other words it must be understood as work in action. In this sense, the photograph cannot be separated from its act of enunciation. Denis Roche expresses this idea very simply and directly: “What is photographed is the action of photographing itself”. In this way, in every visual text, by definition the evidence of the subject of the enunciation or enunciator can be recognised.

An analysis of the “cut” or selection that the photographic frame involves, using the parameters we have explored at the morphological and compositional level, enables us to determine how the presence of the subject of the enunciation is specified. Two main strategies can be defined in photographic enunciation. On one hand, that which serves for discursive modelisations of realism in the staging, of an essentially metonymic (syntagmatic) nature, in which the photographic signs maintain a physically contiguous relation with their reference, a relation which signals the indicial vocation of photography. On the other hand is the discursive strategy based on non-realistic modelisations, much wider and more complex to define, of a mainly metaphoric (paradigmatic) nature, in which imaginary relations are established between the visual elements or signs – which can be observed in the photographic text- and their meanings.

In the metaphor, the relation between the sign and the reference is not contiguous, but rather absolutely free, which explains the potentiality for numerous readings that stimulate artistic discourse. We have pointed out that the origin of photography can be found in the indicial relation that the photographic image holds with reality. Schaeffer states that the photographic image is the putting into practice of an iconic code, whose signs have a very different nature from other means of expression. Schaeffer’s essential nuance is precisely this: not all iconic signs work in the same way, nor do they perform the same function. For Schaeffer, the photographic image is essentially a sign of reception, which implies that it is impossible to understand within the framework of a semiology that, as we are aware, defines the sign from the viewpoint of its emission.

Pragmatic flexibility is one of the essential features of the photographic image, there to serve the most diverse communication strategies associated to the multiple, changing statute of photography Schaeffer, 1990, p. 8). Identification and distancing are two enunciative strategies that involve very distinct discursive effects on the part of the viewer. Identification is more frequent in photographs in which the indicial is predominant, where the impression of reality is the main effect sought. Social documentation photography frequently seeks an emotional response from the viewer, an effect of identification from the public. Distancing is a discursive effect that is often produced when the viewer is aware of the conventional or artificial nature of the photographic representation, as in the case of certain aesthetic works (Duane Michals, Witkin, Mapplethorpe, amongst others).

To go back to Schaeffer, the pragmatic flexibility of the photograph, in other words, the fugitive condition of meaning in the photographic discourse, would give rise, depending on the case, to a semantic ambiguity, to a multiplicity of readings in which the viewer’s subjectivity is involved. However, this does not mean that just any reading of the photographic text is valid: examination using the two previous levels of the analysis has enabled us to identify the presence of the use of a series of visual elements and their structural relations through a necessarily rigorous argumentation starting from the materiality of the photographic text.

The metaphoric character (open) of many artistic contributions must be linked to the identification of isotopies and of connections of isotopies in the text itself, like marks in photographic enunciation. The isotopy may be defined as a redundant set of figurative / expressive and semantic categories that enable regular reading. According to Greimas, and in his application to audiovisual text analysis, “poetic discourse may be conceived as a projection of phemic networks [units from the plane of expression, as opposed to “semes”, that refer to semic units], isotopes, which recognise symmetries and asymmetries, consonances and dissonances [the presence or otherwise of visual rhythms] and finally, significant transformations of [visual] sets” (p. 232).

Intertextual relations

Clearly, the concept of intertextual relations embraces a complexity that cannot be dealt with in just a few lines. Firstly, it must be highlighted that every text, by definition, is always related to other texts that have come before it. The photographer cannot avoid the influence of other photographers’ work, or that of those who work in fields beyond the limits of photography itself, such as painting, comics, cinema, television discourse, sculpture, literature, etc. The mark of these influences will be recorded, sometimes more visibly than others, in the materiality of the photographic text produced, and will be shown in the enunciative marks referred to above. The presence or recognition of iconographic motifs can also sometimes be mentioned, which involve establishing a relation between a concept with figures, allegories, narrative representations or cycles, such as passion (as a religious motif), angels, cemetery (romanticism), etc.

Thus, different nuances in the way these influences are registered in the photographic text can be established:

• Citation is the literal presence of the work (or a textual aspect of the work) of another photographer or creator (in the widest sense).
• Collage is a technique based explicitly on the use of fragments of other visual texts.
• Pastiche consists of taking certain characteristic elements of the work of a photographer, artist or creator, and combining them in such a way as to give the viewer the impression that it is an independent creation.
• Finally, intertextuality is generally spoken of when a sufficiently elaborate and worked-on interplay of relations is detected between the analysed text and other texts to which it is productively related. The reading ability of the receiver is essential to the detection of this type of intertextual relation, the recognition of which is subjective. It must be borne in mind that we must not lose ourselves in “interpretative drift” that turns our analysis into an aberration, without the level of argumentation needed to justify the intertextuality present in the photograph studied.

A determining factor in intertextual relations is the mise en abîme. If a picture or any other type of representation is reproduced within the photograph, as a part or all of the whole, we have an experience of intertextuality that, while sometimes not obvious, is always feasible.

In some cases, effects of irony and humour are achieved through the use of the discursive construction techniques that are always present in one form or another in every photographic text.

This series of concepts has been studied by various authors including Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Umberto Eco or Mijail Bajtin.

Others

This space is reserved for the inclusion of other concepts that may be related to the interpretive level of analysis of the photograph. This is entirely up to the analyst studying the image.

Comments

Once the various concepts comprising the study of the articulation of viewpoint have been examined, a summary of the most relevant aspects should be made. It has been verified that most of the parameters considered at the interpretive level of analysis are closely interrelated, to the extent that they are not easy to define independently.

The table format has been employed in this proposal for the analysis of the photographic image since it is to form part of a website, in which we provide links to explanations of numerous concepts and abundant examples. We have thus created a tool that sets out to be as clear and didactic as possible, while maintaining its academic rigour. The ideal presentation for the photographic analysis is as a continuous text, as a “literary” format, in which the pertinent relations between the concepts exposed are continuously established.

The overall interpretation of the photographic text, which we have seen is essentially subjective, considers the possibility of recognising oppositions that may be present inside the frame, the existence of meanings that shapes, colours, textures, lighting etc., may refer to; the way aspectualisation and focalisation of the photographic text are constructed through the examination of the articulation of the viewpoint and the way space and time are represented; what types of intertextual relations and oppositions (relations with other audiovisual text) can be recognised, and a critical evaluation of the image (where appropriate).

At this interpretative level it is advisable to follow the so-called “principle of parsimony”, which consists of choosing the simplest interpretative hypothesis from the many that can arise, as advocated by certain philosophers of science such as Cohen or Nagel. It is said that “one hypothesis is simpler than another if the number of types of independent elements is lower in the first than in the second” (Arnheim, 1979, p. 75). The aim is to offer a critical reading of the image from a vision of totality. To do so, a synthesis of the most relevant aspects dealt with has to be made, although under one or various perspectives that relate the various hypotheses put forward during the analysis. In order to do this, we briefly explore some of the concepts that may come up during the analysis of photographic images.

The first refers to the concepts of ambiguity and self-referentiality, as defining of the artistic texts, as put forward by Umberto Eco. Ambiguity refers to how open the meanings in the text studied are, as opposed to the singularity of meaning in a reading. Self-referentiality refers to the capacity of the work of art to provoke a reflection on the very nature of the artistic text, the photographic image in our case. Some academics use the expression “mise en abîme” to refer to the presence, within the image, of elements that refer to the very representational nature of the visual text. The term metadiscursivity may also be used. The study of space, time and actions in the representation, together with the articulation of viewpoint, are items of analysis in which the presence has been detected of these structural features that point towards the “poetics of open work”.

We have also referred to the possibility of recognising certain significant practices such as those found in the categories of classical representation versus baroque representation, as defined by Wölfflin. Santos Zunzunegui (1988, pp. 170-172) pertinently applies these to the analysis of landscape photography. The classical conception of the photographic representation consists of the existence of a compartmentalised vision of the world (punctuality, fragmentariness); presentation of the way the world is organised in differentiated planes; symmetry as structural weight; absolute clarity (legibility of space, time and action); and discontinuous temporality (instantaneousness). On the other hand, the baroque conception of a photographic representation is the existence of a joined-up, interwoven worldvision; pre-eminence of the depth of the representation; dominance of atectonic shapes (continuing beyond the photographic out-of-range); prevalence of the idea of absolute unity; relative clarity (Wölfflin said that “the baroque revolution allowed light to spread over the landscape in free patches for the first time”); and temporal durativity (continuity, atemporality). To follow Zunzunegui, the so-called “baroque” images update “narrative programmes that we might term maintenance of state (nature as Eden), while classical images do so with transformation programmes (annexation of territory; the destruction of the original state)” in his references to case studies of landscape photographs (p. 172).

To follow Zunzunegui, the so-called “baroque” images update “narrative programmes that we might term maintenance of state (nature as Eden), while classical images do so with transformation programmes (annexation of territory; the destruction of the original state)” in his references to case studies of landscape photographs (p. 172).

Some photographic analyses may include the use of the term mannerism to describe certain types of representation. This, according to Hauser, is a complex concept in which tension prevails between antithetic stylistic elements. Historically, mannerism was a pictorial style born at the end of the Renaissance, in which artifice, shape, manner were manifest as symptoms of an intellectualised and deformed expression that hides in its depths a profound (and also emotive) drama of the failure to connect and problematisation of the external and the internal. Some photographic texts may thus be described as mannerists.

Omar Calabrese uses the term neobaroque to refer to the rupture of stability in the classical order present in numerous artistic contributions in the post-modern period. Classical canon was upset by “categories that powerfully ‘excite’ the ordering of the system, that destabilize it from all sides and create turbulence and fluctuations” (p. 45). Amongst the characteristic features of neobaroque representation the following may be highlighted: the aesthetic of repetition and variation (concerning the idea of order, originality and irrepeatability of the idealist and vanguard aesthetic); bringing the concept of totality, i.e., the importance of detail or fragment to crisis point; the re-evaluation of the idea of disorder and chaos, widespread in contemporary culture (fractal beauty, the aesthetic of the monstrous or the idea of accidental reception through the influence of zapping in television consumption); the importance of imprecision, of the incomplete and erratic in aesthetic reception; the predominance of the labyrinth as a symptom of taste for the enigma, what is hidden, or the weight of non-linear reading of artistic texts; finally, the perversion involved in a fragmentary distorted reading of the text.

The use of citation or pastiche in artistic production can reach great heights, such as Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, which is based on citations of Adorno, Wittgenstein, Saint Thomas, Conan Doyle, etc., and for Calabrese is a neobaroqueopus. Some of these features can also be identified in photographic texts that are related to the current post-modern sensibility, which is closely linked to the idea of neobaroque. Concerning post-modernity, Umberto Eco has stated that “is not a trend to be chronologically defined, but, rather, an ideal category- or, better still, a Kunstwollen, a way of operating. We could say that every period has its own postmodernism, just as every period would have its own mannerism”. He goes on to add: “But the avant-garde (the modern) reaches a point where it can go no further, because it has produced a metalanguage that speaks of its impossible texts (conceptual art). The post-modern reply to the modern consists of recognising that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently” (p. 72).

We do not want to end the presentation of our analysis methodology without adding that visual pleasure is a key factor in image reception. It should also be said that analytical activity is not without its own pleasure, as understanding (or thinking you understand) the hidden meaning (or meanings) in the photographic message also brings pleasure. This pleasurable feeling would appear to be brought about by the fact that one has reached the success of the analytical enterprise. We coincide with Roche when he says that on analysing a photograph, “the question clearly is no longer «what does a photo suggest?» nor «what can a philosopher do with a photo?»…but rather «what is a photograph related to, once it’s been taken?»”(p. 73). We have attempted, to the best of our abilities, to answer this with the proposal of this methodology for the analysis of the photographic image.