Contemporary Photography and Intersemiotic Appropriation

Abstract

This article aims at investigating the relationships between the pictorial and photographic systems that are present in the work of contemporary photographers such as Miguel Rio Branco. Since its invention, photography has been placed on dialogue with other visual media, especially the pictorial ones. From technical to semiotic perspectives, these images were initially understood in terms of their uniqueness and aesthetic similarities with painting, which made the blurry technique an important characteristic of the pictorial style in photography. In the 1920s, a necessary break occurs: photographers, such as Man Ray, begin experimenting with the expressive potential of photography. Such actions prepare the field for the emergence of the 1960s’ contemporary photography. By exploring the dialogue between visual systems, the work of artists such as Miguel Rio Branco motivates our research on the intersemiotic feature of contemporary photography. Expressive possibilities typical of photography, e.g. the photographic cut, coexist with investigations which are characteristic of the pictorial system. Miguel Rio Branco appropriates chromaticism to establish such dialogue among visual systems, dialogue which is here analyzed in a diptych by the photographer, taken as an example. Our focus is on enunciation strategies that invite us to relate the picture with an iconographic repertoire and apprehend how to build a visual message that exceeds the photographic language, in these images.