A PERSON AS A VISUAL MESSAGE: SEMIOTICS AND AESTHETICS OF THE HUMAH IMAGE
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2023-1-48-77
In modern socio-humanitarian science and everyday reality, the problem of visual semiotics is a key one, given the process of total visualization of the modern world, which requires a serious critical reflection of this phenomenon. The author of this article wants to reveal this problem in the fundamental context of philosophical and visual anthropology, presenting an original project of semiotics and aesthetics of the human image, for which he uses and rethinks the main approaches of modern philosophy in this area. The article is dedicated to the development of the main problems of semiotics in the space of a holistic aesthetic image of a person, presented as a visual message. The author seeks to reveal and substantiate the sovereign, independent and central significance of the visual image of a person in modern semiotic, visual-anthropological, philosophical-anthropological and aesthetic studies. The article explores the mechanisms and levels of perception and understanding of a person, presented as a certain visual message, in everyday life. Critically using and developing the approaches of Roland Barthes in relation to text and image analysis, the author analyses in detail the levels of visual communication encountered in the modern world. He draws special attention to the importance of modern digital technologies in the process of visualizing the everyday existence of a person and their image. Thus, the semiotic and visual-anthropological analysis of modern visual advertising and media, the nature of the use of the image of a person in them and the specifics of modeling its specific meaning are presented in detail. The author considers a person’s image in a more fundamental visual-anthropological and philosophical-anthropological key, and presents it as a spontaneous manifestation of human existence in a phenomenal aesthetic form implemented mainly at the pre-reflexive level. The author of the article uses Barthes’ selection of three levels of meanings (linguistic; having an iconic or denotative code; not having an iconic or connotative code) to study a holistic visual human image, whose formation is somehow influenced by all person’s components (personal name, speech, clothing style, etc.). The author dwells in particular detail on the meaning of language as a manifestation, a way of forming and perceiving a visual human image, the correlations of the denotative and connotative levels in it, and reveals the specific features of visual self-presentation, communication and intersubjectivity in the modern world.
Keywords: semiotics of human image, visual anthropology, aesthetics of image, Roland Barthes, visual message, levels of meanings, language and image
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Issue: 1, 2023
Series of issue: Issue 1
Rubric: ARTICLES
Pages: 48 — 77
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