Semiotics of Images of Orientalists' Travelogues: A Postcolonial Reading (Case Study of Kermanshah)

Western thinkers, relying on this Orientalist discourse, as Edward Said says, is a system of power-knowledge that with Orientalization. The East makes it possible to identify the West as a distinctly, exceptional and superior ontological and cognitive phenomenon. In fact, in postcolonial studies, the goal is that the type of representation must change. The represented image should act not in the direction of justifying superiority but in the direction of equality. Because the representations of the Eastern world, the colony is at an unequal level compared to the colonizer. They were expected to passively and silently allow the West to watch them as objects. The observer, far from the object being studied, is placed in a position as if she can stare at her object without being seen. Saeed's plan in dealing with such a method is representation. Representation itself is not reality but an external report and a kind of manipulated image of it. Representation is defined as "the production of meaning through conceptual and linguistic frameworks." The system of representation creates a copy of culture and makes them a reality.
However, photography is inextricably linked to reality, and the existence of any photograph depends on the recording of a moment, subject, or reality in the external world, But it also allows the photographer to conceptualize. In fact, the photograph breaks a piece of time and place from its reality and creates a relatively independent text with its own meanings. In this article, in order to analyze the discourse, we will use image semiotics tools for better understanding. We will analyze the photos with the tools of substitution and companionship, interaction and contrast of signs, texture and background and intertextuality. In this way, a methodical framework can be used to analyze the photos.
Due to the fact that Kermanshah was one of the main routes for Europeans to enter Iran, many orientalists have crossed this route And there are many books in this field. But few of these books contain photos or images. The purpose of this article is to review the content that includes photos or images of the area. Examining the images in these texts, we conclude that most of these images are in the structure of colonial relations and They are placed through the lens of knowing the East for the West and inducing a special framework to the East.
A Otherness narrative, in which the West is at the center of discourse and can recognize and narrate another. This method is repeated by different tools. Texts, paintings, and photographs can all be analyzed alongside each other in order to exclude the East and design a central position for the West. In fact, the photo became a factor in maintaining the power of the West against the East. Most of the stereotypes that exist in order to show the superiority of the West and the backwardness of the East in the Orientalist discourse are also reflected in the images.