ABSTRACT
Barthes’s description brings out something of the complexity involved in the transmission of the photographic message. First, he emphasizes that there is rarely just one person involved in the production of the photograph. In addition to the photographers and other technicians who work together to take the photograph, there are also reporters, editors, and copywriters who select the photograph, place it within the context of a particular news story or other journalistic genre, and often compose additional words (‘captions’) to anchor the photograph to a particular set of meanings. Of course, the way photographs are interpreted is also very much a matter of the ‘readers’ (or ‘viewers’) of the photograph—the personal or cultural associations they have with different people or objects represented and the ways they have been taught to ‘read’ photographs over the course of their lives.
