photo analysis - Chirac Libération
To analyse photography, we ought to consider that a photograph is not a pure analogon of reality. Indeed, photography carries a message, an interpretation of reality through connotations. Every picture has some connoted elements that load the image with meaning and that are of diverse nature, from the choice of the moment and of the perspective made by the photographer, to the adding of superposed texts. Thus, an analysis of a newspaper picture ought to try to make objective the elements that load meaning into a picture. The picture I have chosen to analyse is a picture of Jacques Chirac from the French newspaper Libération, dated of the 5th of May 2006. In order to analyse this picture, I will firstly analyse the image alone, apart from the superposed texts. I will concentrate my analysis on connoted elements, such as Chirac’s pose and the background objects, and try to show the implicit connotations and the symbolism of the picture. I will also try to emphasize the necessity of a code, mainly based for this picture on the knowledge of the main events and evolutions of French politics. Then, I will analyse the image together with the texts, as well as the syntax that connects them.
As Roland Barthes relevantly notices, it is impossible to describe the denoted message of a picture without adding a connotation, an interpretative message to it. However, it is possible to describe the picture, in paying attention not to add too much subjective interpretation to the description. Thus, in the picture of Liberation, we see in the foreground a man of an advanced age in a black suit, and in the background, which is fuzzy, some red curtains, half opened to a closed window. The denoted message in this picture is not really rich, no real astonishing information being carried by the picture itself. We might wonder if the fact that the denoted content of the picture is poor, that there is not much to see or feel in this picture, makes this picture more propitious to the adding of connotations both in the emission and the reception processes. Perhaps we can infer that in the sender (photographer and newspaper) mind, the denoted message of this picture is less important that the connotations we can add to it. And indeed, this picture is really propitious to add connotations to.
Regarding connotations, it is really hard to make the distinction between the intentional connotations, those added intentionally by the sender, and the interpretative connotations, those added by the addressees. Following is that a photography analysis can hardly be totally objective, being partly (or totally?) based on the analyser subjective interpretation. However, once we have recognize this fact, we can go further in the analysis, justifying the subjective interpretations in explaining how the analyser’s mind, his code, his background knowledge, lead him to this interpretation (in this case I will explain parts of the code I have as a French concerning French politics).
First, we ought to know that the man on the picture is Jacques Chirac, the French President. It might seem obvious to French people, or even to European people, but what about those who have no knowledge of French or European Politics? Even, for this simple fact, the interpretation of the picture supposes a minimum code: the knowledge of Jacques Chirac’s face and of the fact that he is the French President.
Apart from this first remark about a necessary code, the first connotation that strikes the observer of this picture is Chirac’s pose. Indeed, the picture is focused on him and shows him alone, looking down, with a particular face expression. From the fact that this picture is in the front page, we might infer that a particular attention was made in the choice of the picture. Therefore, every detail is to be considered as important, chosen by the sender to transmit a striking message. First, Chirac is shown alone. This loneliness in the picture may be connoted as a political isolation. We all know that in politics, isolation is never a good thing. Second, Chirac is shown looking down. Glance is often symbolic. For example, a forward glance may mean a prospective mind, someone who is interested in the future. In philosophy, it is important as well: we might recall this anecdote of the philosopher Thales from Milet falling into a hole because he was watching the sky, a glance that symbolizes an attention to the Ideas. What does Chirac’s glance to the ground could mean, here? First looking down is a glance at oneself. When you look down, you see your own body. The body is the only thing that does not change in your environment: wherever you are and whatever the environment that is around you, there is only one constant in your outlook of reality: it is your body. Then, looking down is symbolic: it could mean that you do not pay attention to the environment around you, that you rather look at yourself. The reasons of such a glance may be diverse: you pay more attention to you than to your environment, or you are lost and/or scared (then the only constant landmark you have is your body), or else. Whatever could be the precise meaning of this symbol, in politics, symbols are used to characterise attitudes. For this specific symbolic glance, it seems to mean an introspective attitude; it gives (to me) the impression that Chirac is a bit lost, that he lacks self-confidence and control over the environment, over what happens around him. Third, this overall impression is emphasized by Chirac’s face expression. Indeed, his mouth’s shape is like a reversed smile (the sides of the mouth are lower than its centre). Thus it does not give the impression of a confident, dynamic man, but rather the opposite.
The second connoted element of this picture is the background. We see in the background red curtains, maybe velvet-made. I do not know if it is everywhere the same, but this kind of curtains in France is often used in luxurious historical places such as The Louvres (which is the former French king place), or the château de Versailles (also a French king place). These luxurious red curtains may symbolize the Elysée, the French president house, in the continuity of French kings castles: luxury and “Grandeur” (greatness) linked to political power. Besides, we can argue for another interesting interpretation to the red curtain. Red curtains are used in theatres to open or to close a play. We can hardly see the movement on a picture, but if we assume a symbolic movement, these curtains can either be closing or opening. We will see that the added-texts, in loading the picture with meaning, favour the “closing” interpretation of the curtains, thus symbolizing the end of Jacques Chirac reign at the Elysée.
There is some text superposed to this picture. The fact that it is superposed makes the whole set picture-text a same message, with a quite complex but unified syntax. Indeed, the picture is not an illustration of the text, and the text is not a description of the picture. As a matter of fact, they appeal to each other, they work together. The picture can hardly be understood without the text, and the text can hardly be understood without the picture. Through connotations and contextualization, the text literally loads the picture with meaning as well as the picture does it with the text. There are on this picture four text zones. These texts have different size, and police, and are all closely connected to the picture, but in different ways.
The first zone is the logo (the name) of the newspaper: “Libération”. According to Barthes, the name of the newspaper influences the reading of the image. And indeed, in this picture it does. The fact that it is superposed to the picture makes it directly included in the connotations of the picture. It sounds like a word from the Revolution vocabulary. It symbolizes what was common to the revolutionaries of 1789 and 1848, as well as to the resistance of the Second World War. In , it is a real federator message. Here it looks like an appeal against Jacques Chirac. Moreover, the newspaper is politically oriented to the left, whereas Chirac is from the right wing (but in order to be able to interpret this, you have to know that Libération is a left-centred paper).
The second text zone is the bigger text, and can be interpreted as the title of the picture. It is just one word: “Interminable”, which has a double meaning in French: endless, or impossible to finish. French people often use the word “interminable” when a movie or a play is too long and becomes boring, when they wait with impatience the fall of the red curtain on the stage… Chirac has been greatly criticized for the length of his presidency (he has been president since 1995). Moreover, he is widely judged as a mediocre president, making lot of great mistakes, such as the nuclear essays in the Pacific, the assembly dissolution in 1998, or more recently the suburbs riot, the CPE long-run strike, and the current Clearstream affair, a high level scandal of corruption. The pose of Chirac together with this huge “Interminable”, laying here as a judging sentence, makes the impression that Chirac feels it himself as endless and impossible to finish. So, “Interminable” seems to apply perfectly as a title for the picture, (and maybe also for the reality?).
The two last text zones are contextualising the message in time and space. They are closely connected to the picture, giving both respectively the symbolic and the real context of the picture. Indeed, the first one, “Alors que Jacques Chirac entame sa dernière année à l’Elysée, l’affaire Clearstream éclabousse encore un peu sa fin de règne“ (which means “while Jacques Chirac begins his last year at the Elysée, the Clearstream affair is damaging a bit more his reign end”), is giving the symbolic context of the picture. It makes reference to the Elysée, which is the symbol for French presidency, and there is also an ironical reference to monarchy, with “end of reign”, affirming a long-waited end to this “interminable” show (significantly, the use of the red curtain symbol implicitly follows Neil Post in drawing a parallel between politics and show business). The second one is giving the “real” context of the picture that is date and place: “Le 5 janvier 2005, à l’Elysée”. It is rather functional and not symbolic at all. The size and the place of these texts are rather different. If we assume that a bigger size means a bigger importance, then the “symbolic context” is emphasized compared to the “functional context”. Indeed, the first one is in a medium sized police, quite nice and easy to read, whereas the second one is in a very small police, so small that it is hard to read. But despites their apparent opposition, the two zone texts are closely connected to each other. Indeed, the picture was taken more than one year before it was used, and the Elysée is evoked in both texts as the place (both symbolic and real) of the events. It gives the feeling that nothing has changed in one year and few months and that the situation has not evolved with time. Thus, it creates a vertiginous impression of immobility (we ought to say that “immobilisme” is the French politics fear, and that it has caused the fall of the 4th Republic in 1958). It can be interpreted as an implicit reference and criticism to the institutions of the 5th Republic. Indeed, the 5th Republic institutions are currently criticized for the “immobilisme” the presidential regime is leading to.
As a conclusion, I would like to say that this picture was perfect to analyse. It allows one to consider the boundary between the connotations the sender put in it and those put by the addressee, and finally to conclude that it does not really matter whether or not a connotation was intentionally meant. Its final result, a united medium gives the addressees a great message, both implicit (the connoted picture and the place, the size and the police of the text zones, as well as the syntax of the whole message) and explicit (the meaning of the words). The symbolic part of the picture (the red curtain, the “Libération” as a revolutionary appeal, the “interminable”) is really rich and coherent. And even if the picture itself is not a work of art, I could not deny a certain aestheticism of the whole medium, through a complex but interesting syntax, a rich symbolism and an interpretative work with matter and time.