Preface

The structure of the photograph is not an isolated structure; it is in communication with at least one other structure, namely the text. The totality of the information is thus carried by two different structures. These two structures are co-operative -Roland Barthes

What is the content of the photographic message? Is it to depict literal reality? An image may, of course, have reduction in fidelity vis-a-vis its object - proportion, perspective, colour, et al. But is this reduction a transformation? A fundamental break from reality? So is the job of an image to reproduce reality, albeit with some flourishes of the photographer, the artist? As Barthes would say "Certainly the image is not the reality but at least it is its perfect analogon and it is exactly this analogical perfection which, to common sense, defines the photograph." All 'imitative' arts - drawings, paintings, cinema, theatre - comprise two messages: a denoted message, which is the analogon itself, and a connoted message, which is the manner in which the society to a certain extent communicates what it thinks of it.

My goal with photographs is to move away from mechanical analog of reality, its first order denotation to the development of second order message, the connotation that I give or perceive or is rendered to the viewer through my ’treatment'.