What does a string of tomatoes say ? Roland Barthes and testing concepts

There a number of concepts that I want to test out as part of gathering material for this final project. For example, whether to use objects with a direct connection to my Dad such as medals, army service record book or to opt for objects, subjects, scenes with no direct link but a visual connection via my memory or imagination.

There is also the concept of time passing or time past; the sense of smell or feeling. Do I or can I convey this by using different software processes or camera settings.

And how to bring a sense of wholeness to the images that I choose for the final selection. Am I telling a story of conveying a sense of what a person was like. Will I need to explain the photos by way of actions or  allow the viewer to 'read' the image for themselves? 

Roland Barthes has some interesting things to say here in his work ' Image, Music, Text ' ( Fontana 1977 ). In chapter one entitled 'The Photographic Message', he writes 'Thanks to its code of connotation the reading of the photograph is thus always historical; it depends on the reader's 'knowledge' just as though it were a matter of a real language, intelligible only if one has learned the signs'. He also says that meaning in images comes from the object photographed, 'the interest lies in the fact that objects are accepted inducers of associations of ideas'. A bookcase equals an intellectual etc.

So if I photograph an artist's easel, does this indicate that Dad was an artist ? If I select a picture of tomatoes, does that say he liked tomatoes, grows tomatoes?  

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And if I change the colour of the image, what does this transmit to the reader, particularly if they do not have the same  visual experience as myself? Does this matter if I'm creating visual memories rather than recreating them ?