In Roland Barthes’s book Camera Lucida (2000), he talked about visual analysis by focusing on his own perspectives of photograph and photography, instead of talking more about photograph technologically and professionally. His book is more like a “diary” that can be read in spare time and can bring some thoughts at the same time. He seeks new vocabularies to understand the photograph, “studium” and “punctum”, which are extremely significant standards for him to judge whether a photograph is a good (or can be said “touching”,“moving”) one. Studium is the conventional cultural meaning of the photograph (both denotation and connotation), it may include the facial expressions, the gestures, the settings and the actions. As to punctum, it is more subjective and intentional. It has some conversations with the readers of the image, and it pricks their emotion with different reasons. These two words construct the main content of the first part.
To compare the advantages and disadvantages of discourse and visual analysis, it is necessary to talk about the differences of writing intentions between them. For the writing intentions, Tonkiss’s work is more academic than Barthes’s. Tonkiss’s statement it is rigorous and objective which covers the definition and the specific and detailed procedures in order, that is where Barthes’s work misses. Barthes talks about visual analysis in a subjective way, which is more like the sharing of his own experiences and thoughts of photography. Though they are totally different two styles of writing, we can more or less find some advantages and disadvantages of these two methodologies.
The most obvious strength of Tonkiss, comparing with Barthes, the strict definition and procedures which I mentioned before. It make the logic distinct and easy to follow. While, Barthes processes the interpretation with a sense of “immersion”. He provides lots of examples with relevant photographs to explain how to appreciate a visual image, especially he gives the example of his mother’s childhood photos that puncture him leaves a deep impression. The style of like writing diaries makes the understanding of visual methodology easier. Nevertheless, it also can be the disadvantage—too subjective. From his words, we can conclude that visual analysis is absolutely a private and personal experience. He takes himself as mediator for all Photography. Starting from a few personal impulses to formulate the fundamental feature (pp. 8). And he advices to exclude the existing culture and knowledge, to think like a primitive, a child — or a maniac instead (pp. 51) which is meaningful and useful for the reader of images.
References
Barthes, R. (2000). Camera Lucida. London: Vintage Books.
Tonkiss, F. (2012). Discourse Analysis (pp.405-418). In C. Seale (ed.) Researching Society and Culture. London: Sage.
MCS Group One 