Photography - The Key Concepts by David Bate

I read Photography - The Key Concepts with the objective of finding out more about "connotation and denotation", as recommended by my tutor.  Bate deals with a variety of topics in this text, including some history and evolution of photography, and definitions of genres of photography, but my concern was mainly understanding connotation and denotation.

What I learned was that connotation is about the meaning of the photograph - what messages does it convey - and that denotation is what you can actually see - what are the technical elements - the physical objects.  Denotation is therefore quite simple: it is the structure of the photograph or as Bates says "the visual signifiers" - the reality of the image. Denotation can be rhetorical - particular if a series of contrasts or antitheses are used to convince us of an argument.  Connotation however could be quite complicated, and open to interpretation.  I imagine that the meaning the photographer wants to convey may be different to another person's understanding of the image.  And photographers can use symbology or semiotics to convey meaning, that might be lost if the audience does not understand the symbology or metaphors used, or has a different meaning in their culture to the one of the photographer.

So with the commentary on the hippo photograph (figure 2.1) in mind, I set about identifying the connotation and denotation of one of my images:

So here we have a scene comprising bricks and mortar, some fencing, some landscaping and a doorway.  The denotation is therefore quite simply a doorway that is closed.  We don't know where it is going but we can see that it's been tunneled under some landscape (or that grass has been planted on top of it).  The connotation for me when I shot it was that I was capturing an inside outside prison.  I was on the outside yet I was imprisoned from what was behind that door.  The door to me felt like a place of no return.  I wanted the viewer to be drawn into the doorway and then blocked.  This image feels to me to be quite sinister and oppressive.  If you look closely, you can see that the doorway is in a state of disrepair, this implies that the area is neglected, abandoned maybe.  And why is the landscaping and structure upside down?  What does that mean?  Why is it so dark?  The fact that there is no lighting around the doorway tells us that the door might not be used that often.  Rather than a blocked entrance hiding something (sinister), is it in fact an escape route (hopeful)?  How would someone familiar with the area see this image?  Culturally what does it mean?  What do people do behind these structures?