ANALYSIS
word length 1500 words ( 500 words each question). You must answer all three question
*Please remember that proper referencing is a pass or fail criteria for this assessment. You MUST reference throughout your response and then include a bibliography at the end, NOT a reference list.
* Do not count the question and your bibliography when calculating your word count
IMAGE NO. 1:
A child drags a toy truck past pro-Russian soldiers outside a Ukrainian military base in Perevalne, Crimea. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Question One:
“The photojournalist ‘snap’ has an authority which other forms of picture-making lack; it presents itself as factual evidence of an actual state of affairs…however, the photograph is a sign… a complex of signs used to communicate a message”. Victor Burgin, Art, Commonsense and Photography, p.3.
Using Burgin’s arguments in this chapter as your basis, analyse the image.
IMAGE NO. 2
American photographer, Annie Leibovitz’s studio photo of Queen Elizabeth II
Question Two:
Using the structuralist methods of analysis described by Saussure, Peirce and Barthes – especially those of ‘denotation’, ‘connotation’ as well as the ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’, analyse this image
Question Three:
Using Barthes’ writings on ‘the second level of signification’ which has a ‘close communication with culture, knowledge, history’, and Hall’s explanation of some representations having a ‘wide, cultural message or theme’, compare and contrast these two images to determine and then construct an account of their wider cultural messages.
Hall, Stuart, ‘Saussure’s Legacy’ , Representation Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, pp. 30 -40 (Supplementary readings)
