Denotation and connotation
What level of denotation/connotation will your image have? You looked at this earlier in Part
One in relation to Dorothea Lange’s image of the migrant mother.
To give an example:
• There are over 200 non-UK players in the Football League (negative – local players are
being squeezed out).
• There are 200 EU players in the Football League (neutral – bald fact).
• There are only 200 EU players in the Football league. (positive – there could be many more).
Project Altruism in practice

The same information – 200 players – but a different inference depending on how you ‘spin’ it.
And that’s just from the perspective of the football fan concerned for the future of the England
team. Each of these statements would connote something quite different to a European player
keen to play in the UK. And so it is with images. Small changes to an image can affect the
meaning quite significantly and the same image will connote different things to viewers
approaching it from a different cultural perspective.
Skilled practitioners can bring a different sense to the images they offer, not by dramatic change
but through viewpoint, composition and the content that they decide to deliver.
Re-visit the case study on Lange’s Migrant Mother in your course reader and note the difference
between it and other images from the shoot. Make notes on what each image denotes and what
it connotes.