Roland Barthes’s Semiotic Reading from Text to Photo: Structuralist to Post-Structuralist Reading

Roland Barthes’s work in semiotics, the study of symbols and signs, gave rise to a kind of process from structuralism to poststructuralism. The most enduring concept for Barthes, which was constantly taking on broader themes, is the concept of text. This feature made the text more than just written and alphabetic symbols. The photograph, like the sign system, is different from the text but is always confined to language and meaning, and Barthes sought to read the image, and especially the photograph, through semiotics. He believed that the photograph signified, more than it reflected, or represented reality. The signs and things that are considered important for the viewer as a reader of the photo, formed the basis of interpretation and analysis. In the present study, the following questions are answered. First, what are Barthes’ semiotic features in text and image? Second, what transition occurs in this reading of Bart’s semiotics from structuralism to poststructuralism? Finally, how are Bart’s semiotic concepts introduced in the photograph? The research method is descriptive-analytical and data collection has been done using library resources. The tools of semiotic approach in text analysis are briefly described and their role and importance in photo analysis and reading are explained.  In Barthes’s semiotic approach, the mythology of the new analytical system, based on implicit and explicit implications, creates more design and function to analyze how meaning and visual representation are conveyed, using only words as linguistic cues. He sought a wider range of cultural actions in the linguistic model. For semantics, which means the search for the fixed meaning of a sign, Barth moves to semantics, in which a meaning is created by the reader. That is, to give up finding a final meaning to a chain of signs or to move from structuralism to poststructuralism. The fundamental result of this research in Barthes’s poststructuralist process is the image as text, the reader and the viewer or the audience as a creative artist, which increases the semantic range. There is independent research on Barthes, semiotics, and theoretical analysis of his ideas about the structure of the literary work and his pattern in the practical critique, narrative, or semiotic reading of literary works. Photo or text and image are not done. Therefore, the author tries to express the role and importance of these tools in reading photos, relying on descriptive and analytical approaches, semiotics in text analysis. The exclusion of the author in the text has been an important step in that the hypertext becomes a force against the past, which not only finds the power to enter and occupy the text, sometimes takes the place of the author and especially in relation to the authorial text, in which the audience creates the meaning of the work as the author, is emphasized in photography by the word punctum in a bright room. The photo viewer or viewer is in fact the same audience as a creative artist can add to the semantic range of the work.