ABSTRACT
Stuart hall begins his analysis of news photographs with the line ‘In the modern newspaper, the text is an essential element, the photograph an optional one’. It might be suggested that this position has changed. Building on classic semiotic theory of Roland Barthes and others, Hall maps out the relations between signifier and signified, denotation and connotation, cultural codes and modes of interpretation, and explores these within the context of the news photograph. Of particular significance are the formal and ideological levels on which news images operate to produce first and second order meanings. In the modern newspaper, the text is an essential element, the photograph an optional one. Yet photographs, when they appear, add new dimensions of meaning to a text. As Roland Barthes has observed, ‘pictures are more imperative than writing, they impose meaning at one stroke, without analysing or diluting it’.
