Hegemony as a visual rhetorical signification in Soviet Estonia photojournalism

The aim of this article is to elaborate some conceptual tools for clearer analysis of social reality, power relations, and their visual representations. One of these instruments through which power relations are established in society is photography. The following paper discusses the relationship between the theory of hegemony as elaborated by Ernesto Laclau and the semiotics of culture of Yuri Lotman. I focus on rhetorical devices such as tropes, metaphor, and metonymy by which, in photography, this kind of power relations are established. The analysed material is taken from the Stalin-era Soviet Estonia’s newspapers.