Visualization of “people” in Soviet Estonian public photographs of the Stalinist era

What is it about?

The main purpose of this article is to elaborate some conceptual tools for clearer analysis of social reality, power relations and their visual representations. One of these instruments through which power relations are established in society is photography. The paper focuses on different strategies by which, in photography, the ‘‘people’’ are constructed as a homogeneous whole of specific historical self- reflection of culture. The first part of the paper discusses the relationship between the theory of hegemony as elaborated by Ernesto Laclau and the semiotics of culture of Yuri Lotman. The ground for believing this incorporation of the two thinkers to be successful is the very apparent theoretical congeniality between them. They both belong to the Saussurean ontological terrain. The second part of the paper tries to develop a bridge between the given theoretical framework, especially Laclau’s concept of empty signifier and Barthes’s concepts of studium/ punctum, and ‘‘iconic photograph’’ from visual rhetoric. I will distinguish four hegemonical strategies of signification: visual naming, dominant text, code text, and dominant language. The analysed material is taken from Stalin-era Soviet Estonia’s newspaper and magazine photographs.

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