The Semiotics of Photography: Towards Objective Hermeneutics

Abstract

How can we know what a photograph means? What messages or codes exist semiotically that help us to interpret it? The mass consumption of images is reflected in the large number of contests, scholarships, galleries, museographic exhibitions and especially in advertising: What are the semiotic parameters that can be established for a reliable and clear judgment to discriminate one photo from another? For critics or judges, artists or the general public, this article seeks to answer these questions by proposing a semiotic analysis based on new advances in science, in psychology of perception and neurobiology of vision; said methodology, currently being applied intensively at ESAV and used in the postgraduate studies of the present author, seeks to facilitate the understanding of the meaning-to improve the hermeneutics-of the photographic image in a systematic and objective way.