Images and visual motifs of Spanish economic power: the IBEX court and the banking crisis (2011–2013)
Main Article Content
Abstract
The media help to construct the visual and iconographic imagery of economic power in the dialectical tension between what they show and what they leave out of view. Images such as unemployment queues, graphs, and portraits of the powerful appear assiduously on the front pages of the press, revealing different visual motifs essential to understanding the narrative of the economy, with its inheritances, mutations and hierarchies, which point to its relationship with other spheres of power such as the monarchy or politics. This article attempts to decipher the codes of visual representation of the economic sphere in Spain through the qualitative analysis of front-page photographs published in El País, El Mundo and La Vanguardia from 2011 to 2013, a period marked by the banking and financial crisis, civil protests, or the judicial prosecution of figures such as Rodrigo Rato. The methodology used combines visual analysis and comparative iconography with theoretical foundations of social semiotics and visual communication, as well as interviews with photojournalists and chiefs of staff. Finally, the results conclude that both economic leaders and the media codify their photographs using specific visual motifs to project a distant and proactive image of the banking elite, which is only disrupted when previously revered figures of the economic elite fall from grace in corruption cases. And also, that in the dialectic of the visible and the invisible of economic power there are hidden historical moments that can never be photographed.
Keywords
References
Agamben, G. (2010). Ninfas. Valencia: Pre-Textos.
André, E. (2007). Esthétique du motif. Cinéma, musique, peinture. Paris: Puv Éditions.
Arnheim, R. (1969). Visual Thinking. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Balló, J. (2000). Imatges del Silenci. Barcelona: Empúries.
Balló, J. & Bergala, A. (2016). (Eds.). Motivos visuales del cine. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg.
Balló, J. & Pérez, X. (2015). El mundo, un escenario. Shakespeare: el guionista invisible. Barcelona: Anagrama.
Balló, J. & Pintor, I. (2019). Iconographies in the public sphere. Fiction devices in the representation of power. Comparative Cinema, 7(12), 5-6. Retrieved from https://www.raco.cat/index.php/Comparativecinema/article/view/354637/446618
Banks, M. & Mayer, V. (2009). Production Studies. London: Routledge.
Banks, M. & Mayer, V. (2015). Production Studies, The Sequel! London: Routledge.
Barthes, R. (1981). Camera Lucida. New York: Hill & Wang.
Berger, J. (2013). Understanding a Photograph. London: Penguin.
Berger, J. (2016). Modos de ver. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
Bordignon, G., Centanni, M., Urbini, S., Barale, A., Sbrilli, A. & Squillaro, L. (2011). Fortuna nel Rinascimento. Una lettura di Tavola 48 del Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. Engramma, 92. Retrieved from http://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=1649
Bourdieu, P. (1999). Contrafuegos. Barcelona: Anagrama.
Castells, M. (2009). Comunicación y Poder. Madrid: Alianza.
Centanni, M., Fressola, A. & Ghelardi, M. (Eds.) (2019). Warburgian studies. La Rivista di Engramma, 165, maggio. Venezia.
Didi-Huberman, G. (2002). La imagen superviviente. Madrid: Abada.
Dyer, G. (2016). 1% Privilege in a Time of Global Inequality. Berlin: Hatje Cantz.
Ekaizer, E. (2017). El libro negro. La crisis de Bankia y las cajas. Barcelona: Espasa.
Fahmy, S. & Wanta. W. (2007). What Visual Journalists Think Others Think. Visual Communication Quarterly, 14 Winter, 16-31.
Fahmy, S., Bock, M. A. & Wanta, W. (2014). Visual Communication Theory and Research. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Foucault, M. (2009). Vigilar y castigar. México D.F.: Siglo XXI.
Garin, M. (2014). El gag visual. Madrid: Cátedra.
Ghelardi, M. (2016). Aby Warburg et la lutte pour le style. Paris: L’écarquillé.
Graeber, D. (2011). Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn: Melville House Publishing.
Habermas. J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kim, Y. S. & Chung D. S. (2017). Anatomy of Front Pages: Comparison Between The New York Times and Other U.S. Major Metropolitan Newspapers. International Journal of Communication, 11, 949-966. Retrieved from https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/5898/1945
Kott, J. (2007). Shakespeare, nuestro contemporáneo. Barcelona: Alba.
Kress, G. R. & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.
Kress, G. R. & van Leeuwen, T. (1998). Front pages: The critical analysis of newspaper layout. In A. Bell & P. Garrett (Eds.), Approaches to Media Discourse (pp. 186-221). New Jersey: Blackwell.
Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005). What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Morris, D. (2019). Postures. Body Language in Art. London: Thames & Hudson.
Panofsky, E. (1972). Studies In Iconology. Boulder: Taylor & Francis.
Pérez Serrano, M. J., García Santamaría, J. V. & Rodríguez Pallares, M. (2020). La presencia en redes sociales de los máximos ejecutivos del Ibex 35 y su papel como influencers. Communication & Society, 33(2), 313-328. https://www.doi: 10.15581/003.33.2.313-328
Piketty, T. (2015). El capital en el siglo XXI. Barcelona: RBA.
Quignard, P. (2014). Sur l’image qui manque à nous jours. Paris: Arlea.
Salvadó, A., Fernández, A. A. & Tedesco, B. (2020). De Lincoln a Putin: el motivo visual del líder político caminando en los media españoles. Comunicación y diversidad. Selección de comunicaciones del VII Congreso Internacional de la AE-IC. Valencia, España, 28-30 de octubre, (pp. 193–204). Valencia: EPI. https://www.doi.org/10.3145/AE-IC-epi.2020.e27
Smaele, H., Geenen. E. & De Cock. R. (2017). Visual Gatepeeking – Selection of News Photographs at a Flemish Newspaper. Nordicom Review, 38(2), 57-70. https://www.doi.org/10.1515/nor-2017-0414
Sontag, S. (1977). On Photography. London: Penguin.
Steiner, G. (1995). What is Comparative Literature? Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Warburg, A. (2010). Atlas Mnemosyne. Madrid: Akal.
Details
Article Details
RIGHTS TRANSFER
By submitting the article for evaluation and subsequent publication in Communication & Society, the AUTHOR exclusively assigns the rights of public communication, reproduction, distribution and sale for commercial exploitation to the University of Navarra through its Publications Service, for the maximum legal term in force -the entire life of the author and seventy years after his death or declaration of death-, in any country, and in any of the current and future edition modalities, both in print and electronic versions.
In the event that the article is not accepted for publication , this transfer of rights lapses with the communication of the refusal to the AUTHOR.
The AUTHOR affirms that the article is unpublished, that it has not been sent simultaneously to another publication medium and that the rights have not been transferred exclusively previously. He is responsible to the University of Navarra through its Publications Service for the authorship and originality of his work, as well as for all pecuniary charges that may arise for the University of Navarra through its Publications Service, in favor of third parties due to actions, claims or conflicts arising from the breach of obligations by the AUTHOR.