Week 8: Photography - Reconceptualising culture, memory and space.

 How do captions and cutlines re-frame the meaning of an image? 

Images can be seen everywhere. In the classroom, the library, the toilet, on t-shirts as well as on any random walls. Advertisements, especially the ones with big yet simple texts and captions, or articles with bold head lines tend to catch attentions easily. Captions and cut-lines are examples of "anchorage".    Barthes (1977) introduced the idea of anchorage. It is an agreeing relation between picture and text, in a way that each contribute to its own part of the overall sum of the message. According to Prosser (1998), captions are used to set the photographs according to their appropriate and conventional text. Meaning to say, they are often there with the image itself to give and provide a slight idea for the receiver/viewer/audience/reader for example: news paper headline. 

Lester (1995) claims that it is significant to possess the ability to make decisions about "various sizes for headlines, subheads, captions, cutlines, and the body of the text". Otherwise, it will be quite puzzling to actually understand what a certain image is portraying. For example, this grumpy cat:

We do not know what exactly the cat is trying to say but by adding captions, it could be that the cat is saying:

Having captions and cutlines give the ability to connect the texts with images provided. That way we could seek to know the truth or story behind the image itself. However, Lacey (1998) argued that an image's meaning may often be ambiguous. In today's modern world, photography is used as post modernity. Photography could be a form of simulacrum. For example, the second image has been edited by inserting captions. The original picture was just the image of the cat itself and nothing more. My point here is that captions and cutlines could re-frame the meaning an image by altering and manipulating its captions and cutlines. According to Stovall and Mullins (2005), "It is the description of the caption that is associated with the photograph". This shows that such captions and cutlines could provide answers towards viewers' question on the image.

In conclusion, the main objective of captions and cutlines is to assist viewers to further comprehend the meaning of a specific picture. Not only does re-framing of these anchorage provide a brief idea or narrates a story, but it could also be used to manipulate and fool viewers for whatever purposes.








References:



Barthes, R. (1977). Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana

Lacey, N. (1998). Image and Representation: Key Concepts in Media Studies. New York: St. Martin's Press

Lester, P. M. (1998). Visual Communication: Images with Messages. California: Wadsworth Publishing Company

Prosses, J. (1998). Image-based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers. London: Routledge

Stovall, J. G. & Mullins, E. (2005). Writing cutlines or captions. retrieved on 13th November 2012, from http://www.jprof.com/onlinejn/webjn-cutlines.html