Summary Of Four Children For Sale By Roland Barthes

It is said that “The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play not with form but with time”. This makes me think that the real content of a picture, which is what the photographer tried to express, is not evident to perceive unless an explanatory text is provided. In fact, I believe that our perceptions of pictures changes over time as the historical context do. In addition, our opinions are never fixed as they are influenced by our environment. Therefore, when looking at a particular picture at a given time, it is certain that our perception of it will be different in the future based on what happen between the first time and second time we saw it.

The mother in the photograph catches the viewer’s eye at first glance, straight in center view with Lange’s lens. Due to the subject focus, the mother and her children, it is safe to declare that the mother knew the photograph was being taken although her eyes linger away from where Lange would be standing. With her children hiding behind her, looking down, the viewer is forced to look at their filthy hair and disheveled appearances. By not giving Lange or her lens their direct attention it forces those viewing the image to look at the subjects themselves and not make eye contact with them. By doing so it is easier to notice the stressed lines on the mothers face, the torn and grimy apparel hanging off of each person and the dirt covering the only visible child’s face, the baby in her

Images everywhere! On the billboards, in magazines, newspapers, books, advertisements, on the internet. OH GOD! These days we are bombarded by images. But why? Most people are visually impressed, and quite strikingly, the human “brain is mainly an image processor, not a word processor.” This is due to the fact that “visuals are concrete and more easily remembered, whereas words are abstract and rather difficult for the brain to retain.” Nevertheless, rather surprisingly human beings tend not to analyze images as they would scrutinize a text. The very moment a text is written, it flies from the hands of the writer and moves to the eyes of thousands and thousands of readers to be evaluated and criticized.

Vivid images can be found abundantly throughout the novel and helps to portray scenes to the point where the audience can actually imagine, smell, touch, and hear everything that is going on. “No matter how they scrubbed their hands, the residue of Red Hot Mama had a way of sticking round, as pesty and persistent as a chaperone at a high school dance.” (158). In some instances the audience can acquire a sense, based on the description whether the characters are self absorbed, considerate, or overly concerned about their appearance. “I ought to be shot for looking like this” she’d tell the mirror in the front hall before going out the door. “I look like I’ve been drug through hell backwards,” she would say on and ordinary day. “Like death warmed over. Like something the cat puked up.” (103). The emergence of the images presented in the novel can help present a better understanding and in some cases, a connection to one of the

picture is an attempt to connect with the reader’s emotions by showing the strong feelings

In his introduction of the paper he grasps the reader’s attention by using emotional words that create a sympathetic image to show as if the photo wasn’t available. Furthermore, rhetorical analysis of the photo is its appeal to pathos for the audience. The photo gets you to feel a sense of distress for the person falling to his death in the photo. The photo also appealed to ethos to a point. It makes you question whether taking the photo was ethical on the photographer’s part.

The reader is able to construct his or her thoughts by observing the small keys in each photo. Some of these keys are the use of color, setting, expression and focus in the scenery and objects around.

Before starting this project, I knew very little about photography, photographers, or exactly how much impact photographical images have had on our society. I have never taken a photography class, or researched too in depth about specific pictures or photographers. This project has allowed me to delve deeper into the world of photography in order to understand just how much influence pictures can have over society’s beliefs, emotions, and understandings’. I have have chosen two highly influential photographers, Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange, who I have found to both resonate with me and perfectly capture human emotions in way that moves others.

The fact that an oculist put up the sign is significant because an oculist is a doctor that deals with eye disorders. Like revealed in The Scarlet Letter, religion is a disease of the eye that can make one paranoid. For example, religion can make one go crazy if they are interpreting every daily occurrence as a sign from G-d. If the sign is a metaphor for G-d and religion, it seems that the sign is an attempt to change people’s devotion to religion. This is because the eyes are wearing glasses, a commentary on how religion needs to be dealt with, like blindness.

“Just give me one more month, I swear I’ll pay it by then!” She slammed the phone down in a rage. Tears slowly crawling down her face, jumping off the ends off her cheeks. The letters of foreclosure and bills stacked high on the table, creating a financial fortress. The lights off, because light comes at a cost. That was my mom eight years ago. The author effectively uses symbolism, setting, and the overall pathos of the photograph to effectively evoke the emotions of the reader. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The path toward this building is designed specifically to approach the cathedral on foot. This is giving me the time long enough to contemplate about the building and learn about the shape, enjoy the structure and even come with multiple ideas about it. It is approachable in this way. It is making us more involved rather than keeping us at a distance. As I am walking I am thinking that the fish has a story behind it. But before I get to the story I am thinking about the sign as part of the language and culture that was created in the community and now it is in use here. The sign and language is the realm of structuralism. However in this case it is not a unified and universal sign. This sign was a way to let others know of one’s belief in Jesus

Photographs are used to document history, however selected images are chosen to do so. Often times these images graphically show the cruelty of mankind. In her book, Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag asks, "What does it mean to protest suffering, as distinct from acknowledging it?" To acknowledge suffering is just to capture it, to point it out and show somebody else that it exists. In order to protest suffering, there has to be some sort of moral decision that what is shown in the photograph is wrong, and a want from the viewer to change that.

Connotation or the iconic message is not as easily explained as either the denotive or linguistic messages. Significantly Barthes has left the discussion of this message to the very end of his essay. The signs that constitute connotation are discontinuous. There is no definite way in which to interpret the separate, connotative message and in the ‘composition’ of the three (denotative, connotative and linguistic) signs an ‘aesthetic signified’ is carried. In much the same way as in text; when intonation is applied, it is a separate signifier than that of the text itself in a linguistic

The first of the two ideas that interested me the most was the way Barthes looked at photos. He did not say that he liked a photo because it had his favorite animal or color. He looked deeper into the photo. He looked to see what had caught his eye the most about a photo he enjoyed. He called the catching of his eye the punctum. Barthes described the punctum as, “… is that accident which pricks me…” (Barthes 27). This “prick” didn’t always hit him with every photo. Throughout the book, he described certain photos that I thought were interesting, but he did not enjoy them. An example of a photo that he didn’t enjoy was the photo of the two nuns and three helmeted soldiers, which was photographed by Koen Wessing in 1979. The main reason that it didn’t appeal to him was that it didn’t have much of a, “duality” (Barthes 23) to it. Then there were photos that had caught his eye. An example of an image he enjoyed and had his prick was a photo of an African American family; photographed by James Van Der Zee in 1926. The family is not what the punctum was. The

Susan Sontag said photographs sends across the harmlessness and helplessness of the human life steering into their own ruin. Furthermore the bond connecting photography with departure from life tortures the human race. (Sontag 1977:64)