Abstract: Analyzing the impact of photography on dramatic literature enters into a profound discord between two media: one under the dominance of the immediacy and intranslatability of visual fragments, and the other relying on the encoded architecture of language. As Barthes observes in *The Message of the Photograph*, the image resists being reduced to a system of signs. Its meaning exists not in isolated units but in a continuous flow. In contrast, written language accepts semiotic analysis. This fundamental contradiction highlights a crucial point: the influence of photography on literature extends beyond mere representation of likenesses, demanding a reorganization of narrative logic and the mental structures associated with both. The emergence of photography in the 19th century transformed literature, offering new ways to analyze and reorganize reality. However, tracking this influence outside of Europe and America, where direct engagement with photography and its innovations did not occur, requires a different form of configuration and comparison. This translation, beyond its linguistic and media layers, also traverses cultural and historical dimensions, becoming so entwined that replacing the photograph with anything else would still yield the same effect on the text. Thus, the question "What impact has the language of photography had on literature or dramatic literature in Iran?" should be approached without assuming direct causality. This paper examines the influence of the language and logic of photography on dramatic literature through the play *Sleep in an Empty Cup* by Naghme Samini. In the first section, the paper explores how photography has affected the structure of plays, touching on an important layer in the formation of Iranian dramatic literature, specifically the influence of European dramatic literature during the translation movement. The second section is dedicated to the play in question, and its guiding question is: "What factors led the playwright to utilize the power of photography or photographic actions in dramatic expression?" This approach allows for a more neutral examination of the text and image within a shared system, especially one that hosts psychological concepts. The research avoids a strictly historical or narrative timeline and examines each factor independently. Keywords: Photography, dramatic literature, Semiotics, photographic language, Naghme Samini Sources: Barthes, Roland, and Stephen Heath. Image, Music, Text: Essays. 13. [Dr.]. London: Fontana, 1977. Barthes, Roland, Richard Howard, and Roland Barthes. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. 26. print. New York, NY: Hill and Wang [u.a.], 2006. Benjamin, Walter. Understanding Brecht. London: Verso, 1998. Brecht, Bertolt, Marc Silberman, Steve Giles, and Bertolt Brecht. Brecht on Theatre. Edited by Tom Kuhn. Translated by Jack Davis, Romy Fursland, Victoria Williams Hill, Kristopher Imbrigotta, and John Willett. Bloomsbury Revelations. London New York Oxford New Delhi Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Campany, David. Photography and Cinema. Exposures. London: Reaktion, 2008. Duttlinger, Carolin. Kafka and Photography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Freud, Sigmund, and Shaun Whiteside. On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia. Modern Classics. London [: Penguin, 2005. Lacan, Jacques, and Alan Sheridan. Ecrits: A Selection. London: Routledge, 2001. Metz, Christian. “Photography and Fetish.” October 34 (1985): 81. https://doi.org/10.2307/778490. Sontag, Susan. At the Same Time. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. ———. On Photography. S.I.: RosettaBooks, 2020. ثمینی, نغمه. خواب در فنجان خالى. چاپ دوم. تهران: نشر نى, 2014. جادونویس, زندگی تئاتری نغمه ثمینی. Documentary, 2020. ملکوتی, بیتا. “خواب در فنجان خالی، زمان از دست رفته.” ماهنامه هفت, ۱۳۸۲, ۵۹-۶۶.