*Monserrate, Bogotá, Colombia, January 2011 with a Sony HX1.

Being visually literate means to be able to examine and speculate the meaning of visual content and to think and look critically on images. Regarding photography it is to be able to apply this principle on your personal reading on the photos you are consuming. I was very challenged this week after going through some of the classic authors of Semiotics like Barthes. I believe I have to start being more conscious on my photography reading. 

Barthes uses two words for image or rather ‘sign’ analysis: ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’. ‘Denotation’ refers to what we can make out in an image, what we can identify when describing the picture. ‘Connotation’ on the other hand refers to the ideology or message that is being conveyed and what the combination of visual elements adds up to it. Another way of exploring the ‘denoted’ image and its ‘connotation’ in semiological terms is ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’, which together make up a ‘sign’.

On the other side there is me, with my family and social background and heritage. My personal history makes a strong foundation for my critical evaluation of images and even more my photography practice. The way I will think about conotations/signifieds and denotations/signifiers is deeply rooted on my upbringing, values, and education as well on the kind of art I was exposed to and at what moments of my life this happened. The literature and philosophical and/or political ideas I have been exposed to as well as significant changes and events in my life for sure shifted my perspective when it comes to ‘decoding’ images. 

I became evangelical when I was 16 years old, and I was so involved with my faith practices that soon I started making plans to become a pastor. Not only that but my desire was to become a transcultural missionary and work on other countries and cultures leading people to the same faith. That shaped the type of art I would follow and even reading I would make. It somehow expanded my borders of knowledge very broadly as I did start to travel abroad and consume so much content in English, what was not my mother language. My new cultural and linguistic experiences through more than 40 countries as the years passed gave me a great foundation for my visual literacy but still, I believe there is so much more to be conquered.

Barthes uses also another two words that struck me these days: ‘studium’ and ‘punctum’. They describe two types of ‘levels’ of interest we might have in a photograph; an intellectual or purely knowledge based one in the case of the studium, and in the punctum – something much more emotional or psychological. Both of them are about our relation to a photograph – the ‘punctum’ being in quite an individual, emotional way, whereas the ‘studium’ is more about what the picture contains and what we read from it; what does it describe; what does it show us, rather than how does it affect us?

Considering my past photography, I believe somehow, I always tried to use storytelling strategies to convey a message that could cause the punctuating effect on people, generating emotions that could move them towards actions, either supporting a cause of even adhering to my own beliefs. For the future I hope I can be more aware as practicing my photography and not to forcing my beliefs and ideas on my images but conveying my thoughts the most effective way I can.

As it shown on the image I chose to portray on the present text, my faith keeps the same as in more than 20 years ago, but being more mature today I would like to be more precise in what I do including my photography.