Semiotics

I first heard the term semiotics whilst studying media at A level. It was loosely used and described but I can still remember my tutor explaining to me how it was the study of signs.

Semiotics is the study of how these signs communicate with us and when this was first explained to me it was presented as a prop in a film scene. These signs all have a connotation, a meaning referring to something other than what is initially apparent; it may lead us to search deeper within an image to find what else is trying to be said. Signs may differ between cultures, they may have other words for objects represented or a sign from the image may mean something different to us, it is how we interpret these items. An example of this is Darmi Halake Gilo by Fazal Sheikh 1992-93. Some people may see her as a woman who is poor, made to pose in the baron lands in Africa but if you look closer you could begin to think well she is wearing jewellery, this doesn’t happen to be an everyday commodity and could symbolise wealth.  As said in Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, ‘With regard to the heterogeneity of good photographs, all we can say is that the object speaks; it induces us, vaguely, to think.”

Semiotics can be broken down into the signifier and the signified, the physical form and then what it is referencing to, for example a top hat is just a hat but it could mean wealth from a certain time in history. The Vanities of Human Life by Harmen Steenwyck is a good example, we see a skull, an oil lamp, a recorder, a book etc which actually symbolise death, wealth, love of music, knowledge etc. Semiotics has been used via a range of media and invites the viewer to think hard about what the artist is truely trying to say to us.

http://www.fazalsheikh.org/

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/harmen-steenwyck-still-life-an-allegory-of-the-vanities-of-human-life

(Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, 1980, page38)

John Stezaker

I recently visited the Whitechapel Gallery and was introduced to the work of John Stezaker. I had heard his name before but never took the time to look at what he had created. He takes old film stills of particularly unknown actors, postcards or book illustrations and collages them which completely changes the meaning of the image. He cuts away parts or places new images over the top to achieve his new desired outcome. His work uses the uncanny in his work, we as the viewer are constantly trying to search for a face and imagine it how it should be.

As previously stated, I had never seen his work before and was impressed how the images worked so well. The Marriage series was one of my favourite. Some of the pictures met so effectively and others changed the face so it was twisted and grotesque portrait. I did think that there was something very mesmerising of this work and stood and stared trying to imagine the whole faces without the added sections.

His famous mask series fused postcards of waterfalls, caves or cliffs with a person’s face. I stopped to again to peer deeper into the images and try and see any facial features. In the end it decided I didn’t need to try and take these images apart but to just look and enjoy.

My favourite piece by him was the upside down reflection of the woman and man in the piano, I think because this was so simple that it was so successful. I turned my head to view it up the right way and then thought I actually preferred it how Stezaker had planned for us to view it. He has taken the normal and made it abnormal but we can still relate somehow to it which is what fascinated me.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/john_stezaker.htm

Whitechapel Gallery, John Stezaker exhibition

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/john-stezaker

http://framescourer.blogspot.com/2011/03/john-stezaker-at-whitechapel-gallery.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stezaker