connotations

I read Barthes' Mythologies in 1997 when I started studying media and communication. Reading about the soldier on the cover of Paris Match in "Myth today", I could immediately visualise the black soldier giving a military salute. Barthes explains the connotative meaning of the picture as "France has a great empire; all her sons, without distinction of colour, serve faithfully under the French flag and there is no better answer to the critics of colonialism than this black's zeal in serving his supposed oppressors." I knew exactly what the soldier looked like. Hence, I was very surprised when I last year found the picture online. It was not at all how I imagined it.