Towards a Grammar of Manipulated Photographs: The Social Semiotics of Digital Photo Manipulation

This article explores the visual grammatical implications of contemporary digital photo manipulation. The rapid and broad distribution of photographs via social media is leading to the conventionalisation of new social practices in photography (Johannessen & Boeriis, Visual Communication 20, 527–551, 2021), including the widespread use of image filters and other types of image manipulation. The smartphone camera has become a constantly available augmentation of our sensory motor apparatus and of our social environment (Blaagaard, Visual Communication 12, 359–374, 2013; Frosh, International Journal of Communication 9, 1607–1628, 2015; Han et al., 2017) and, consequently, manipulated photography is becoming an almost dialogical practice of expressing thoughts and emotions in real-time among individuals on a potentially very large scale (Boeriis, Discourse, Context & Media 41, 28–40, 2021). From a point of departure in multimodal social semiotics (Hodge & Kress, 1988; Kress & van Leeuwen, Multimodal discourse: The modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. Hodder Arnold, 2001), this article explores how different visual meaning-making resources are involved in manipulating digital photographs. Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar (2020) serves as a framework for the analysis and discussion of the options available for photo manipulation in digital software, both specialised for social media (e.g. Instagram or FaceApp) and for professional photography (e.g. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom). Thus, the article unfolds the meaning-making of photo manipulations by relating different effects to the grammatical categories affected by different adjustments.