Faces Amid the Mountains: A Barthesian Reading of a Photograph in Sore Aninditya Ardhana Riswari1.
Febrian Putra2.
Novia Sisca Handayani3.
I Putu Adi Putra Wiwana4 Faculty of Fine Arts and Design.
Institut Seni Indonesia Surakarta.
Solo.
Central Java.
Indonesia 1anindityaar@isi-ska.
id, 2febrianputraa.
fp@isi-ska.
id, 3siscaharyani@isi-ska.
4wiwanaputu@isi-ska.
ABSTRACT
In an era characterized by media saturation, cinematic visuals possess considerable ideological and emotional significance.
This study analyzes the portrait of a Ladakhi woman in Sore .
, directed by Yandy Laurens, to investigate how visual elements in mainstream cinema serve as cultural representations and evoke emotional responses.
Employing Roland Barthes's semiotic notions of studium and punctum, the photograph is examined as a locus of dual significance: intellectually comprehensible via cultural norms and emotionally resonant through subtle, unarticulated nuances.
Utilizing a qualitative descriptive methodology, the analysis focuses on BarthesAos semiotic framework as delineated in Camera Lucida .
Each visual component encompasses gesture, attire, look, color, and background, which are analyzed for their representational and emotional meaning.
The theoretical foundation is grounded in Barthes's multiple semiotic layers and Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding paradigm, which emphasize that meaning is not fixed but is influenced by viewers through cultural and emotional settings.
The findings underscore how studium elucidates the socio-cultural backdrop of Ladakh, gendered identity, and physical isolation, whereas punctum manifests in nuanced visual features, particularly the woman's partially obscured mouth, which elicit profound, personal responses.
These characteristics show that the photograph is not just a decorative narrative, but also a place for international empathy and societal commentary.
This research illustrates that visual components in movies can convey intricate cultural tales and emotional depth.
Barthes posits that cinematic images function as affective texts that connect aesthetics and ethics, documentation and emotion, so cultivating critical awareness and empathic engagement with oppressed identities.
Keywords: Visual semiotics.
Roland Barthes, studium and punctum.
Sore.
INTRODUCTION
image, whether explicit or implicit, shapes the viewerAos perception of social reality Visual elements in film can no longer be (Wahyuningsih, 2.
In other words, film regarded merely as aesthetic components or does not merely tell a story.
it constructs a narrative supplements (Guatri, 2.
Within world, determining who is seen, how they are the domain of visual culture studies, film is portrayed, and which narratives are voiced or understood as a representational medium laden with ideological content, wherein each Pantun Jurnal lmiah Seni Budaya Vol.
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by historical, political, and cultural contexts Therefore, reading images critically becomes (SLAMET, 2.
Visual representation in crucial for unpacking how meaning is film consistently operates within a logic that visually mediated and how affect functions within the domain of representation (Happy prevailing power structures.
Thus, a critical et al.
, 2.
understanding of film requires moving In Sore, the photograph of the Ladakhi beyond its aesthetic pleasure or narrative arc woman serves not merely as part of the to interrogate how images speak: to whom, protagonistAos visual journey but also as a by what means, and for whose interests.
symbol of estrangement, resilience, and In this context.
Sore .
, a film by intercultural connectedness.
Through the Yandy Laurens, presents a compelling site of semiotic framework of Roland Barthes.
Beyond offering a personal journey particularly his concepts of studium and and temporal reflection, the film unveils punctum, the image can be analyzed as a intercultural dynamics through its poetic visual construction that encapsulates the visual landscape.
One pivotal moment is the appearance of a photograph of a Ladakhi cultural meaning and spontaneously felt woman standing amidst a snow-covered approach provides a means to investigate the Jonathan .
layed by Dion Wiyok.
This role of images beyond narrative functions, photograph is not merely a narrative artifact.
serving as venues for the expression of it functions as a visual anchor laden with emotion, identity, and social critique that are both affective and reflective.
Its The Barthesian Based on this theoretical grounding, the invites a deeper reading of how the visual present study aims to analyze the latent operates not only as a narrative device but meanings embedded in the photograph of the also as a generator of meaning.
Ladakhi woman featured in Sore .
using In the current era of visual saturation.
Roland Barthes's semiotic approach.
The images, including photographs within film, emphasis is on elucidating how the visual hold a strategic role in shaping public components of the photograph function as They are no longer neutral or both cultural and narrative signifiers, as well innocent but are always embedded within as emotional catalysts for individual viewer specific social, cultural, and ideological This study seeks to demonstrate contexts (Al Farizi et al.
, 2.
In popular that visual representations in popular film media, photographs possess the power to possess the potential to convey layered Faces Amid the Mountains: A Barthesian Reading of a Photograph in Sore meanings beyond their explicit messages and concepts of studium and punctum.
"Studium" to manifest the tension between what is seen refers to the culturally and socially legible and what is felt.
The Barthesian framework aspects of an image that make those was chosen for its capacity to bridge the meanings accessible through historical and realms of representation and subjective ideological frames.
In contrast, punctum experience while also encouraging critical identifies the unpredictable emotional detail engagement with the visual construction of that AupiercesAy the viewer, generating an contemporary Indonesian cinema.
intimate, subjective reaction beyond rational METHODS This Each visual component in the image, including composition, facial expression, descriptive approach using Roland BarthesAos bodily gestures, and gaze direction, is read as methodological framework.
The choice of this part of a signifying system capable of approach stems from its capacity to explore producing multilayered meanings.
Barthes's the deeper, often concealed, layers of framework emphasizes that meaning comes meaning embedded in visual representations, from how and why something is arranged, particularly in relation to affective and not just what is shown.
As such, this analysis cultural dimensions that elude textual or aims to interrogate not merely the imageAos narrative analysis.
The focus is interpretative, representational content but also its affective seeking to decode visual signs within a single potential on how it operates emotionally and photographic image from the film Sore .
symbolically in relation to its viewers and by Yandy Laurens.
The selected image, broader cultural discourse.
depicting a Ladakhi woman, is treated not as Theoretically, this study draws on a mere aesthetic or documentary element, but Roland BarthesAos fundamental assumption as a symbolic and affective visual site in that visual signs carry not only denotative which cultural narratives and emotional meaning but also connotative dimensions of responses converge.
meanings shaped through cultural, historical.
The object of analysis was chosen and affective processes .
Iker, 2.
Barthes purposively due to its dense symbolic content posits that photographs are not passive and emotional resonance.
In Barthesian reflections of reality but open-ended texts terms, the image does not merely exist within subject to multiple interpretations.
Through the film's diegesis but emerges as a cultural text that demands critical engagement.
The signified, he asserts that meaning is not fixed analytical process follows Barthes's semiotic but contingent on context and the subjectivity principles as articulated in Camera Lucida of the viewer (Barthes, 2.
This notion .
, focusing particularly on the dual situates photography as an affective and Pantun Jurnal lmiah Seni Budaya Vol.
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Hall's theory offers a critical lens to relations transcend fixed semiotic codes.
The tension between studium and Barthesian particularly relevant for unpacking the subtleties of visual imagery in cinema.
Studium encourages cultural and intellectual interpretation, whereas punctum evokes emotional unpredictability and personal (Syauqi When applied to the representation of image-viewer Alibasya examine how female bodies are constructed depictions, but as carriers of gendered ideologies (Dewi, 2.
Frequently encoded through stereotypes of femininity, passivity, or exoticism, female representations often However, these images are also subject to Khisawa In the case of the Ladakhi Shiddiqi, 2024.
Zahar, 2.
This duality womanAos photo in Sore, the image resists highlights the capacity of photography not passive objectification.
Her presence in a merely to depict but also to elicit and unsettle.
As Mathar .
suggests, this capacity conventional visual tropes and instead makes the photograph a unique site for the asserts agency, resilience, and intercultural production of both meaning and affect, connection (Andriani, 2.
This interpretive allowing for a deeper examination of how images can articulate unspoken emotions or cinematic spaces.
Furthermore, this study is informed by particularly the works of Stuart Hall.
Hall .
challenges the idea that representation merely reflects reality.
rather, he introduces the concept of a regime of representation, in possibility allows the visual analysis to move beyond surface readings toward the affective, potentials of representation.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Studium: Reading Cultural Context In Roland BarthesAo semiotic approach, studium refers to the rational and cultural engagement of the viewer in interpreting a It reflects the viewerAos ability to symbolic systems, language, and cultural understand an image within a framework of His encoding/decoding model collective knowledge as historical, social, and emphasizes that media messages are shaped symbolic (Tan, 2.
In this context, studium by ideological forces at the production stage, is not merely an emotional response but but their meanings are ultimately interpreted, rather an entry point to comprehend how accepted, negotiated, or resisted by audiences according to their social and experiential contexts (Marditama et al.
, 2.
This negotiation opens space for resistance, subversion, and alternative readings within the consumption of media imagery.
recognized cultural codes through symbols.
Faces Amid the Mountains: A Barthesian Reading of a Photograph in Sore functions not only as physical protection but also as a marker of social and spiritual position, as the colors and motifs of Ladakhi beads are often associated with local social structures and beliefs (Yola et al.
, 2.
The womanAos upright, symmetrical posture and her direct gaze toward the camera create a gesture that is visually ambiguous yet powerful, as she stands with her left hand partially covering her mouth.
This gesture invites multiple interpretations:
Is she shielding herself from the cold, discomfort? The eye-level camera angle Figure 1.
Portrait of the Ladakhi Woman Taken by the Character Jonathan in Sore.
(Source: @dionwiyok.
Sore between subject and viewer, fostering a humanistic and non-hierarchical impression characteristic of studium readings.
Representation of Identity.
Space, and The portrait of the Ladakhi woman in Gender framework of studium through its layered Beyond aesthetics, the photograph visual components.
The background of a carries complex representations related to rough-textured stone wall indicates the ethnic identity, geographic isolation, and geographic location of Ladakh, a remote gender position within the visual space.
mountainous region in northern India.
part of an Indonesian film, the Ladakhi Natural lighting that illuminates part of the woman appears as an AuotheredAy figure subjectAos face and body creates a serene, cool, visually marked as distinct through her and intimate spatial impression, evoking a clothing, ornaments, and geographic setting.
Within Barthesian theory, the connotative The womanAos clothing also meanings of these attributes function as The ethnic identity markers constructed by combination of a checkered vest, red knit hat, dominant cultures.
Drawing on Edward and beaded necklace reflects an integration of SaidAos ideas, such subjects are often framed However.
Sore presents a different Details such as an old wristwatch portrayal: the Ladakhi woman appears not as and metal bracelet add further dimension, a passive or exoticized figure but as a fully referencing time and memory, marking an present, autonomous individual who does not submit to dominant gazes.
Within this context, clothing Pantun Jurnal lmiah Seni Budaya Vol.
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Ladakh, depicted as expectations and challenging conventional a quiet and cold backdrop, is not merely a portrayals of minority figures (Joseph, 2.
geographic location but a metaphor for The embodied gesture within the alienation and contemplation.
The stone wall photograph, covering the mouth while and dim lighting signify a harsh yet maintaining direct eye contact, generates a contemplative condition.
this visual space forms an inner realm where emotions and While hand-over-mouth gestures can identity are processed silently yet intensely.
suggest suppression or silence in many The gesture of covering the mouth cultural contexts, the assertive gaze resists combined with the direct gaze suggests that such a reading.
Drawing from visual theory, the woman is not a passive object.
She particularly the notion of the Aureturn of the emerges as a subject possessing agency and gazeAy as articulated by bell hooks and Laura meaning, creating a tension between silence Mulvey, this moment can be read as a and speech, visibility and concealment.
disruption of the male gaze.
The subject Through Stuart HallAos framework, the scene confronts the viewer, not as a passive object is a moment of meaning negotiation between but as an active participant in the scene.
This the encoded message of the filmAos narrative confrontation reclaims visual space and and the decoding by viewers (Hall, 2006.
Nafi, 2.
Audiences may reinterpret this representation that typically renders women, woman who resists stereotypes and offers possibilities for alternative readings.
voiceless or ornamental.
Spatial Visual semiotics is an important factor contributes to this renegotiation of meaning.
that influences the representation of ethnic The cold, isolated setting of Ladakh is more than just a neutral background.
it becomes a (Radovic.
According Roland space for expression and emotion.
Henri Barthes, the distinction between denotation Lefebvre's theory of social space informs how and connotation allows for a layered reading historical and ideological practices shape of visual texts (Barthes, 1.
The traditional geography in this context (Middleton, 2.
The barren, quiet landscape constructs a mountainous backdrop of the Ladakhi setting for introspection and emotional woman function as culturally encoded depth, functioning metaphorically as a site of signsAimarkers that signify ethnic difference both alienation and resilience.
This layered within a broader visual regime.
However, spatiality challenges binary constructs of Sore presenting the woman not as a static ethnic symbol but as an emotionally resonant This resistance to dominant visual contradictory terrains .
an Lanen & Meij, codes creates space for alternative narratives Faces Amid the Mountains: A Barthesian Reading of a Photograph in Sore Punctum: The Detail That Touches Emotion (Knuuttila, 2.
Unlike studium, which If studium enables cultural and social relies on shared codes and cultural literacy, reading, then punctum appears as the element punctum is deeply personal and idiosyncratic.
that emotionally affects a small detail that Its effect cannot be predicted or generalized.
unexpectedly stirs the viewerAos feelings The hand covering the mouth, though subtle, (Mathar, 2.
In this photograph, the acts as a rupture in the otherwise composed punctum lies in a simple gesture: the hand This gesture introduces a dissonance, partially covering the mouth.
There is no explicit explanation for this gesture, and withholding that opens interpretive space for precisely in its ambiguous meaning, a space the viewer.
It is precisely this ambiguity that for personal and profound affection emerges.
allows punctum to function: it resists closure.
Punctum works through silence.
It does not refuses full comprehension, and instead convey a message explicitly but invites the lingers in the viewerAos affective memory.
viewer to engage emotionally through The temporal dimension of punctum also enhances its emotional charge.
Barthes describes punctum as a Barthes notes, the experience of punctum small wound: it is not conspicuous, yet it is often arrives belatedly.
it is not always felt present and leaves a disturbing trace.
In the immediately but returns unexpectedly, like a context of Sore, this detail strengthens the haunting (Fried, 2.
In Sore, the image emotional impression not through dramatic continues to reverberate after the scene has narrative, but through a feeling that lingers in passed, suggesting that affect in visual media does not always operate synchronously with Beyond the gesture, the womanAos gaze narrative time.
The gesture of the hand, the and facial wrinkles enhance the affective womanAos gaze, and the texture of her skin Her direct look toward the collectively construct an emotional delay, a camera is independent.
She fully presents kind of resonance that stretches across time.
herself, inviting the viewer to gaze upon her This quality distinguishes punctum from and reciprocate the gaze.
The wrinkles on her narrative emotion.
it is not tied to plot face are not merely signs of age but markers progression but exists in the stillness between of lived experience: the body becomes a images, in what remains unsaid.
visual archive of time and labor.
The contrast From a feminist visual perspective, the of colors also intensifies the punctum: the punctum in this image also challenges striking red knit hat stands out among the conventional depictions of women in visual dark clothing and pale gray background.
This culture (Buikema & Zarzycka, 2.
Rather color does not dominate but is enough to than highlighting beauty, youth, or passivity draw attention and emphasize the subject as traits often emphasized in mainstream the emotional center within the calm frame.
cinematic aesthetics, the emotional depth The power of punctum lies in its ability here stems from age, experience, and to bypass rational analysis and instead emotional opacity.
The wrinkles are not Pantun Jurnal lmiah Seni Budaya Vol.
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The womanAos to transcend the filmAos narrative.
It is not only face thus resists objectification.
it is not a part of the story but also forms a reflective surface to be consumed but a field of moment for the viewer, opening new emotional complexity.
In this way, punctum awareness about representation, humanity, acts as a feminist intervention disrupting and how we perceive the Auother.
Ay In the space dominant visual economies and calling between the image and the viewerAos gaze, an attention to bodies and faces that are often active and open interpretative space emerges, marginalized or rendered invisible.
where meaning is not only consumed but also Moreover, the formal composition of deeply contemplated.
Photographs as Spaces of Dual Reading:
The muted tones of the stone wall Between Narrative Objectivity and Affective and clothing create a subdued atmosphere.
Subjectivity allowing the red hat to subtly puncture the Photographs are often perceived as visual field.
This chromatic interruption mediums that capture reality Auas it is.
Ay This works as a visual punctum, a detail that is belief stems from their ability to freeze emotionally resonant.
The red stands out not precision, seemingly presenting the world in as a metaphor but as a sensory trigger.
a neutral and objective manner.
Within this captures the viewer's attention, then guides it framework, photographs are regarded as towards the face and gesture, thereby visual narratives that convey facts and events initiating a cycle of emotional involvement.
with a certain distance and objectivity this way, punctum is not just a singular detail grounded in documentary values.
However, such an approach tends to overlook other elements, between color and gesture, and dimensions of the photographic experience, between gaze and silence that together evoke particularly the affective and personal aspects a deeply affective response (Jenkins, 2.
that cannot be fully articulated through Visual Effect as a Space for Viewer rational explanation.
Reflection From this perspective, a photograph The photograph of the Ladakhi woman can be understood as a space of dual reading, in Sore functions not only as a narrative containing layers of representation that are signifier but also as an affective reflective space for the viewer.
Visual elements like the simultaneously holding the potential for gaze, hand gesture, facial wrinkles, and color highly individual, subjective, and affective composition create an emotional field that interpretations (Bryant, 1.
The objectivity verbal language cannot fully explain.
Within BarthesAo framework, this is the power of contextual cues such as place, time, or event punctum: a detail that opens personal and does not negate the possibility of unspoken spiritual experiences, creating an intimate yet powerful personal emotional experiences.
and contemplative emotional resonance.
Often, the strength of a photograph lies Faces Amid the Mountains: A Barthesian Reading of a Photograph in Sore precisely in the tension between what is seen and what is felt.
This dual reading suggests This form of empathy transcends that photographs serve not merely as it constitutes an acknowledgment of archives or documentation, but as dynamic human diversity and complexity.
In this context, popular media functions as a bridge:
analyzed from historical, political, and social connecting center and periphery, self and other, and aesthetics and ethics.
In its psychological, existential, and emotional simplicity, the image carries a symbolic weight that facilitates encounters across convergence between the collective and the identities, not through dominance, but intimate, evoking memory, touching on through mutual recognition on an equal trauma, or igniting imagination (Good, 2.
This is the power of visual media: it not Photographs The Popular media, such as film, possess a position from voyeur to witness.
This device that invites viewers to engage with distinction is significant: it reframes the act of looking from one of consumption to one of ethical engagement.
The photograph of the marginalization of women within social Ladakh woman resists reduction to an This visual representation implies a ethnographic spectacle.
instead, it cultivates subtle form of social critique.
it does not an ethical gaze that acknowledges the convey protest overtly but operates through subjectAos deep emotional resonance.
By portraying a with intimacy and respect, the film creates peripheral identities as objects of fascination space for reinterpreting dominant central In doing so, the film critiques woman from a remote geographic region seen with dignity, thus shifting the viewerAos narrative element but also as a reflective marginalized.
Sore allows the subject to be Ladakh woman functions not only as a Rather than speaking about the In the film Sore, the photograph of the when addressing issues of marginality and through familiar and emotionally resonant representation in popular media is crucial unique ability to communicate complex ideas pedantic manner.
Empathy and stimulates social sensitivity in a non- Convey Social Critique and Cultural only entertains but also awakens awareness The Capacity of Popular Media to or pity and instead proposes a more relational, reciprocal mode of seeing.
embedded in mainstream visual discourse Aesthetic experience within popular (Faradilla, 2.
Moreover, the photograph facilitates a realm of cultural empathy, an affective Jacques Ranciyre suggests, artistic means reconfigure the process whereby viewers from diverse distribution of the sensible, which organizes backgrounds are invited to experience the visibility and invisibility (Ranciyre, 2.
Pantun Jurnal lmiah Seni Budaya Vol.
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2 Desember 2025 Sore, the photograph subtly alters what is By applying the dual concepts of made visible: not through spectacle, but through stillness, presence, and emotional demonstrates how a single image in film can The audience is not told how to feel.
operate beyond its narrative function, acting instead, they are gently led to stay with the instead as a site where cultural codes and image, letting their feelings do the work of emotional resonances converge.
Studium This approach resists didacticism enables a reading of the image through social, and instead trusts in the viewer's capacity for historical, and symbolic lenses, allowing Here, the film exemplifies how audiences to recognize cultural markers such popular media can engage audiences in acts as geography, clothing, and gesture, while of critical empathy, encouraging them to punctum disrupts this rational decoding by question normative assumptions without introducing personal and affective intensities alienating them through overt moralizing that provoke subjective engagement.
(Lobb, 2.
This study shows that visual elements Furthermore, in popular cinema are never ideologically popular media can function as a discursive Rather, they participate in the space where dominant cultural narratives are construction of meaning, identity, and power.
negotiated and reimagined.
The photograph The photo of the Ladakhi woman becomes a becomes a site of encounter between global subtle critique of visual representation:
and local, tradition and modernity, and instead of reinforcing exotic or passive visibility and erasure.
In an increasingly stereotypes, it presents a subject with presence, agency, and emotional depth.
Her moments carry political potential: they invite gaze, posture, and cultural markers resist audiences to imagine new relationalities that simplification and invite a more ethical, are not grounded in assimilation but in empathetic encounter with "the other.
" The respectful recognition of difference.
The interplay between distance and intimacy, filmAos quiet subversion and its refusal to documentation and feeling, positions the exoticize or victimize models a form of photo as a space for reflection both for the cultural storytelling that is both accessible character within the film and for the viewer and critical.
In doing so, it expands the role of beyond it.
Sore In emphasizing the duality of narrative positioning it as a vital tool for fostering objectivity and affective subjectivity, this research affirms the importance of critically engaging with visual media.
In the age of image saturation, film and photography CONCLUSION The photograph featured in Yandy Laurens' Sore serves as a richly layered medium of meaning when Roland BarthesAo awareness, empathy, and social critique.
Through a Barthesian lens, visual media can be understood not merely as vehicles of Faces Amid the Mountains: A Barthesian Reading of a Photograph in Sore entertainment or documentation, but as Faradilla.
Representasi Budaya affective texts that invite us to reflect on the Patriarki Dalam Film Barbie .
complexities of culture, identity, and human Universitas Islam Indonesia.
Fried.
BarthesAos punctum.
Critical Inquiry, 31.
, 539Ae574.
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