Reading the semiotics of Dian Arbes's photographs in the light of Roland Barthes' views

Photography was created to make the world easier to understand, but the result was the opposite. A photo that was taken in America and had concepts of culture, language, race and even climate created a different understanding for a viewer on the other side of the world. So that it was necessary for him to understand and decode the image in the details of those cultural and linguistic concepts. Lack of complete knowledge of these concepts leads to misunderstanding.Roland Barthes proposed the method of semiotics of "explicit meaning" and"implicit meaning" and said that in order to understand both of these, all the surrounding information of the work should be understood and then analyze that work. This research analyzed the photos of Dian Arbus. In this way, according to the elements in the photos, gestures, age, culture, etc., the signifiers have been determined and the primary and then the secondary signifiers or the implicit signifiers have been described based on the background of the photo. The research method in this study was analytical-descriptive and based on the library method. The photos of Arbus were black and white and had a definite square shape, and in most of the photos, the subject was placed in the middle of the frame, staring at the camera lens and frozen, bringing the viewer into the cold and soulless world of the photo. What was the purpose of Dian Arbus photography? According to the analysis and interpretation of Arbus's photos and taking into account the historical conditions of America in the 60s, he depicted another world so as not to be forgotten. Despite the flaws and defects of most of the Arbus subjects, they were still beautiful and remarkable. Arbus showed in his photos that humanity, kindness and love exist above everything else in this world.