The analysis of ideology in press photography and its cinematographic representation

ABSTRACT In our daily life, we live in a world of signs. We have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized, but semiotics help us to understand the world of the signs and their messages. If we look at media texts using semiotics methods, we can see how ideology works. Accordingly, the key concept of this study is how we read the dominant ideology in the media texts. The study is limited to the press photography and its uses in cinema as the visual signs in the area are arranged to transmit specific messages relaying on the sense of reality. The photographic and cinematographic images which show people suffering have a double edged sword, because there is a tremendous contrast between the moment of real pain and our consumption of it. This thesis has a case study about a dedicated photo journalist James Nachtwey who takes war photographs all around the world. We see the famous photo-journalist looking for the decisive moments in a reflexive documentary film "War Photographer". Part of the iconographic status of the press photographer is to shows things the way they are, and this mythology surrounding the press photographer. Their aura is as much suspectible to mass media infiltration as any other product of the media industrie. Unless we understand that all these films and photographs are being produced within an ideological system and brought to us, there is not much of an importance what we watch because all these images that reach us in whatever form they are being aesthetised and brought to us at the end it does not help us to change anything in the systems that we live in. KEY WORDS: Semiotics, ideology, press photography, cinema