Abstract
In his seminal essay, “Rhetoric of the Image” (1964), Roland Barthes establishes the core concepts and steps of semiotic approach towards the study of image. He defines three semiotic codes in the pictorial text (the linguistic, the coded iconic, and the non-coded iconic) and analyzes the functions of the linguistic message through the discussion of “anchorage” and “relay.” Drawing on the rich intertextuality between word and image, this paper discusses the significant role of visual culture in the works produced during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Rather than an exclusive approach to examine verbal documents from the period, this presentation favors a combined semiotic, discursive, and aesthetic approach to study the political graphics against a background of changes in the national and transnational political realities. Aside from the discourse of various ideological messages, this project also focuses on how the political visual art was utilized by various artists to persuade and mobilize the population to support the revolution; an effective modality that both influenced and reflected the sociopolitical climate of the period. Incorporating elements of native culture and religion, revolutionary posters are great sights of collective memory and close reading of them provides a particular kind of lens through which one can reconstruct the factuality of historical events and analyze the utilization of public spaces for the purpose of political changes. Although a written history of the revolution is a great data for the interests of critical analysis, yet, these invaluable visual archives are also a vivid addition to the existing literature of the historiography on the Iranian Revolution.
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