Roland Barthes’ “Rhetoric of the Image“ essay from Image – Music – Text, Translated by Stephen Heath. Hill and Wang, 1977. (excerpt)
At the first sight of the article, the first thing I noticed was the picture in the article, a picture about food. After I followed the in-depth analysis of this picture along with the article, this picture is no longer a simple picture of food for me.
This poster is an advertisement of PANZANI, and the main information in the picture is composed of language and image. PANZANI is the first message conveyed by this advertisement, and the logo of PANZANI is also displayed in the center of the poster. What’s interesting is that the company’s name PANZANI is associated with Italy. And this is interesting because even though the meaning doesn’t have much to do with Italy, the pronunciation alone can make a connection. And knowing this meaning requires some knowledge of French. Then there are the pure images, a half-open string bag, with pasta, canned food, sachets, tomatoes, onions, peppers and mushrooms. Where the food is placed, and its color has a very deep meaning. The color of the food points to Italy, while the different foods are arranged closely together to indicate that this is the food needed for a complete cooking. And I feel that in this ad, using these easily understandable symbols with different meanings creates the same meaning. It’s an amazing thing.
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