Photography and intermediality: Analytical perspectives on notions referred to by the term “photography”
-
Lars Elleström
Lars Ellestrom (b. 1960) is a professor at Linnaeus University 〈lars.ellestrom@lnu.se 〉. His research interests include intermediality and semiotics. His publications includeDivine madness: On interpreting literature, music, and the visual arts ironically (2002); andMedia borders, multimodality and intermediality (2010).
Abstract
Given the complex reality of media and mediation, it is reasonable to question the meaningfulness of treating photography as “one medium.” This article suggests that it is necessary to distinguish between a number of complementary media aspects. It takes an intermedial perspective, based on the belief that one cannot understand photography without thoroughly comparing it to how other media are construed. First of all, photography can be understood in terms of media of production, storage, and distribution. This paper focuses primarily on the aspect of distribution and the critical meeting of the material, the sensorial, and the cognitive. It supports the view that photography, like all other media, should be analyzed in terms of what are referred to here as the four modalities of media. Minute investigation of the material, the sensorial, the spatiotemporal, and the semiotic features of media products that are understood to be photographs makes it possible to discern essential relations to other media. Finally, photography is discussed as qualified media. Media products cannot be fully understood without considering the historical and social processes that form our understanding of how they communicate and produce aesthetic import. At least two different types of qualification dominate our present culture: photography as documentation and photography as art.
About the author
Lars Ellestrom (b. 1960) is a professor at Linnaeus University 〈lars.ellestrom@lnu.se〉. His research interests include intermediality and semiotics. His publications include Divine madness: On interpreting literature, music, and the visual arts ironically (2002); and Media borders, multimodality and intermediality (2010).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Between the grid and composition: Layout in PowerPoint's design and use
- Beyond speech balloons and thought bubbles: The integration of text and image
- Abstraction as a limit to semiosis
- The multimodal representation of emotion in film: Integrating cognitive and semiotic approaches
- Hearing a shakkei: The semiotics of the audible in a Japanese stroll garden
- Towards a social semiotics of rhythm in popular music
- A carnival pilgrimage: Cultural semiotics in China
- Photography and intermediality: Analytical perspectives on notions referred to by the term “photography”
- An exploration of possible unconscious ethnic biases in higher education: The role of implicit attitudes on selection for university posts
- New insights into the medium hand: Discovering recurrent structures in gestures
- The multimodal construal of the experiential domain of recipes in Japanese and Chinese
- Cyberterrorist messages: A semiotic perspective
- A necessary condition for proof of abiotic semiosis
- Review of From First to Third Via Cybersemiotics
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Between the grid and composition: Layout in PowerPoint's design and use
- Beyond speech balloons and thought bubbles: The integration of text and image
- Abstraction as a limit to semiosis
- The multimodal representation of emotion in film: Integrating cognitive and semiotic approaches
- Hearing a shakkei: The semiotics of the audible in a Japanese stroll garden
- Towards a social semiotics of rhythm in popular music
- A carnival pilgrimage: Cultural semiotics in China
- Photography and intermediality: Analytical perspectives on notions referred to by the term “photography”
- An exploration of possible unconscious ethnic biases in higher education: The role of implicit attitudes on selection for university posts
- New insights into the medium hand: Discovering recurrent structures in gestures
- The multimodal construal of the experiential domain of recipes in Japanese and Chinese
- Cyberterrorist messages: A semiotic perspective
- A necessary condition for proof of abiotic semiosis
- Review of From First to Third Via Cybersemiotics
