What Charles Dickens did with words for the underage toilers of London, Lewis Hine did with photographs for the youthful laborers in the United States. In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee was already campaigning to put the nation’s two million young workers back in school when the group hired Hine. The Wisconsin native traveled to half the states, capturing images of children working in mines, mills and on the streets. Here he has photographed “breaker boys,” whose job was to separate coal from slate, in South Pittston, Pa. Once again, pictures swayed the public in a way cold statistics had not, and the country enacted laws banning child labor.
In the Barthes reading “The photographic message”, Barthes takes the position that, while an image “is not the reality but at least it is its perfect analogon”. Furthermore, he asserts that this “analogical perfection” is what “to common sense, defines the photograph”. (p. 135)
It is with this description that Barthes is making the assertion that the photographic medium is the most accurate re-creation of reality that is available to human beings. He goes on to say that, on an analytical level, many would refer to as 'common sense', the photograph and perceived reality go hand-in-hand.
Barthes goes on to explain the dual messages that comprise any piece of media. The first being a denoted message (the analogon itself) and the connoted message, which Barthes defines as “the manner in which the society to a certain extent communicates what it thinks of it” (p. 136). Barthes refers to the denotation (denoted meaning) as the analogon because, as the analogon is the most accurate representation of reality and doesn't require a code, such is with the denoted meaning of a message. As with both the analogon and the denoted meaning, there is no code, hidden message or even opinion involved.
The image I have chosen for this first blog entry is entitled “Breaker Boys” and it was taken in 1910 by Lewis Hine, who was hired by the National Child Labor Committee to take images chronicling the life experience of a child laborer. It was this image especially, a collection of boys whose job it was to separate coal from slate, that roused public outcry against child labor and thus, bring this issue to the forefront of public discourse and propel government action to curtail such practices.
The denoted message with “Breaker Boys” is, as with most denoted messages, rather straightforward. It is a collection of boys all wearing similar garb and all especially filthy. None in the picture can be seen to be smiling, or anything of the like. Most seem to be apathetic, curious and/or tired.
The connoted meaning, on the other hand, is immense as society's reaction to it and others like it. To American society just after the turn of the century, this picture represented a shameful reality: one that involved the exploitation of children as laborers. Even further, this picture represented the horrible working conditions in dangerous jobs during that period, and the use of children in labor took away from their education. The NCLC's intent in hiring Hine was to show the rest of the country what was really happening with their youth and to get them back in the classroom where they belonged. The denoted meaning of this image adds depth to the connoted meaning as well. These children have the faces of working men. They are together, not as a classroom or an athletic team. They are children, many of whom appear to be younger than adolescence, who have taken the role of the working man in more than just labor. During the time of this picture, the two million or so children literally embodied the working man, and this image represented that undeniable fact to the American people.
Barthes says specifically in reference to captions that they have a “parasitic message designed to connote the image” and that the image “no longer illustrates the words; it is now the words which, structurally, are parasitic on the image” (p. 142). He does go on to say that text can do anything from “duplicate” the image “to be included in its denotation” (p.143) to “amplifying a set of connotations already given in the photograph” (p. 143). I find all of these points to be applicable to the caption of my image, as there is a lot of connotative meaning, but it could very well be denotative in the year 2010 as a historically important photo. Ultimately, in 1910, it didn't take a caption for mothers and fathers to understand the magnitude of that image.
- William Jennings
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