Saint Mark’s Church Bell Tower – Abstraction

Dissertation submitted for the Degree of Photomedia BA (Hons)

Chapter 1 (extract)

Human communication is something that everyone recognises:

“[it] is talking to one another, it is television, it is spreading information, it is our hair style, it is literary criticism: the list is endless.”

(Fiske, 2001:1)

All communication involves signs and codes (more on this later).  In this dissertation communication is seen as the production and exchange of meanings.  Messages, or texts, interact with people in order to produce meanings, i.e.:

“it is concerned with the role of texts in our culture.”

(Fiske, 2001:2)

Therefore, the message or text is an element in a structural relationship whose other elements include external reality and the producer/reader.

“Producing and reading the text are seen as parallel, if not identical, processes in that they occupy the same place in this structured relationship.”

(Fiske, 2001:3)

In history, Church art and design was the pinnacle of human creativity and the inherent message of Christianity was communicated to people who were illiterate or poorly educated.  The arts, including photography, is not restricted by the barriers of communication, and can reach deep into people’s hearts and minds causing an experience of Christianity…

From:

TO WHAT EXTENT CAN PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHURCH ART AND DESIGN COMMUNICATE CHRISTIANITY?