Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Mothers Behind Cameras: Mother-Artist, Mother-Child Dyads In Sally Mann’S Immediate Family And Elinor Carucci’S Mother, Hayley A. Pierpont

Scripps Senior Theses

Women, particularly mothers, are often made invisible within narratives of their own family and domestic spaces, despite their role as creators and maintainers of those spaces. This perpetuation of invisibility is threaded throughout the history of artistic practices, (photography especially). Contemporary mother-artists Sally Mann and Elinor Carucci confront and unapologetically reflect their singular experience(s) with motherhood through their photography, which addresses the symbiotic dyads of mother-child and mother-artist. This thesis focuses on an analysis of four images: Mann’s The Wet Bed and Lee’s Dirty Hands, and Carucci’s Trying to Protect Emanuelle and I Will Protect You. In both …

Picturing Rights, Judging Wrongs: Photography And The Emergence Of Human Rights, Austin Dilley

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Recoding The Archive: Memory And Identity In The Photographic And Filmic Works Of Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari, And Alia Ali, Olivia K. Johnson

LSU Master's Theses

Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari, and Alia Ali are artists of Middle Eastern descent living and working in the United States, mainly in photographic and filmic modes. Neshat and Azari were born in Iran and immigrated to the U.S. amid the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which drastically changed the political and cultural landscape of the country. Ali was born in Yemen but her father is specifically South Yemeni and her mother Yugoslavian, two countries that no longer exist. As artists experiencing exile and diaspora, with complicated relationships to their home countries, their identities are muddled by hybridity and the struggle between being …

Optics In Art: Ways Of Seeing, Christian J. Baker

P-12 Lesson Plans

In this lesson, which relies on art from the ZMA Collection and the exhibition it's your world for the moment displayed in fall 2020, students will learn about the basic mechanics of the eye and its similarities to the camera, explore the history of the camera obscura and its use in art and early photography, learn about perspective as a principle of photography, and learn to relay information on major artists by way of their relationship or impact on photography as an artistic medium.

Undocumented Migration And Political Community In Susan Meiselas's Crossings Photographs, Sarah Bassnet

Visual Arts Publications

In 1989, Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas (b. 1948) photographed irregular border crossings in southern California. At the time, it was relatively easy for undocumented migrants from Central America and Mexico to cross between ports of entry, even as there was growing pressure on American officials to address border security.1 One photograph in Meiselas’s Crossings series depicts a border patrol officer apprehending a migrant off the interstate near Oceanside (fig. 1). Two torsos fill the center of the image. The officer grasps the man’s clothing, propelling him toward the nearby vehicle. With heads cut off by the frame and backs turned, …

Traditions And Transformations In The Work Of Adál: Surrealism, El Sainete, And Spanglish, Margarita J. Aguilar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Nuyorican movement was a cultural and intellectual movement beginning in the late 1960s through the 1970s that coincided with the era of civil rights struggle in the United States. The artists, writers, poets, and others in the movement were of Puerto Rican descent and resided in New York neighborhoods such as El barrio or Spanish Harlem, Loisaida or the Lower East Side and the South Bronx. The term “Nuyorican” was embraced as a badge of honor and pride by New York’s Puerto Rican community. It was during this time that cultural-specific institutions such El Museo del Barrio, Taller Boricua, …

The Harlem Book Of The Dead: Pan-Africanism, Funerary Portraiture, And The African-American Way Of Death, Jessica D. Feldman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the text and images contained in James Van Der Zee and Camille Billops’s seminal photobook The Harlem Book of the Dead (1978). The title, frontispiece, and introduction, combined with Van Der Zee’s funerary portraits, illuminate the connection between African-American rituals of death and Pan-Africanism. While these two concepts appear to be distinct, they are both predicated upon and intrinsically linked to key values in African American culture, including liberation and the meaning of community. Each chapter focuses on a different contextual framework for situating The Harlem Book of the Dead within the historical and political moment …

Tactics For Thriving On Multiplicity: Liliana Porter’S Photo-Drawing-Installations, 1973–Present, Jennifer Bratovich

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Porter’s hybrid 1973 works during a period of transnational artistic mobility. It argues she employed strategies of reproduction and contingency to circulate the works among multiple contexts, and shows how her 2012 revisiting of these works led to their revitalization within current reassessments of Latin American conceptualism.

Do You Wanna Go Dancing?, Anthony Kascak

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The transdisciplinary art work within Do you wanna go dancing? unpacks the experience and perception of my interpersonal relationships, as well as the role that touch and introspection has in my visual arts practice and everyday life. I am interested in pairing the act of looking with the sensation of touching through specific installation and arrangement of intimate imagery, ceramic fragments and frames, and manual or digitally fabricated surfaces. The negotiation of these installations orient the viewer to consider their positionality within space, as well as the extent in which distance, intimacy, and vulnerability fluctuate inside these psychological spaces.

The …

Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, Lauren Paljusaj, Anne Savage

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Creative Works Winner

Most of us know Nevada beyond the Strip. It’s a place of houses, of shopping plazas, of movie theaters, and grocery stores. A place of hotels that are also places of work. A place of basins, ranges, vistas, and nature. A place of personal history. For Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, curators Lauren Paljusaj (ENG BA ‘20) and Anne Savage (CFA BA ‘22), draw on photographs found in UNLV Special Collections to uncover the intimate visuality of a Nevada of past centuries. The exhibition focuses on how the imaged built landscape of early 20th century Southern Nevada …

Confessional Melancholy: W.G. Sebald’S Aesthetic Solution To The Inadequacy Of Representation, Theo Koskoff

Selected Undergraduate Works

In the wake of W.G. Sebald’s death in 2001, scholarship on his unique, genre-bending literary texts has flourished. Though much of this scholarship has paid due attention to the theme of the inadequacy of representation, little has been written that focuses on Sebald’s persistent expressions of melancholy in relation to this theme. In this paper, I argue that Sebald’s response to the inadequacy of representation is “confessional melancholy”: he expresses anguish at that which has been lost by admitting that his own literary representation is inadequate in portraying its subjects. Using a theoretical framework borrowed from Theodor Adorno and the …

The Photogram Now And Then: An Investigation Of Contemporary Photogram Practice, Susan Melissa Andreas

Senior Projects Spring 2020

My senior thesis is an investigation of contemporary photograms. My thesis is not meant to be a comprehensive study of photograms but rather a look into how specific uses and treatments of it have evolved since its inception in the nineteenth century. A photogram is a photograph made without a camera. The paper begins with a look into nineteenth-century photogram practice to provide general information and context about photograms. The first chapter outlines when the photogram process was invented, who it invented it, how it was used, what its traditional steps were, and what the images looked like. A description …

Some Notes On Congruency, Ryan J. Rusiecki

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Some Notes on Congruency is an examination of the seemingly arbitrary methods in which the built environment facilitates order among its inhabitants (eg., parking lot striping, roadway signs). Asphalt fissures observed at the main intersection in Red Hook, NY were used as a starting off point for making the photographs contained within this book. A lens with a focal length that closely resembles the range of human vision was used to communicate the experience of discovering fissures from my perspective as a pedestrian and motorist. I was most captivated by temporal, subtle fissures, such as the replanting of flower beds …

Martian Mother, Elizabeth Mcgrady

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the relationship between humans and land, through the lens of the scientific and religious, bridging the physical realm with the spiritual. It acts as accompanying material to the project titled Martian Mother, supplementary information to the visual work, and an extension of the proposal, the center of the work. The proposal exists to send myself, or a like-minded individual, to Mars with artificial insemination equipment to give birth to the first Martian, becoming the first Martian Mother. This work is rooted firmly in speculative fiction, creating a nonlinear future framework for a new society and space exploration.

An Uncertain Line: Making Art About Photographs Of American War And Violence., Cassidy Meurer

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Photography’s power in capturing a moment in history is indisputable, but inevitably flawed. Assumptions of objectivity and truth are made that do not count for the bias of the photographer, or the bias of the viewer. These assumptions do not explain the warped effect of freezing life at a fraction of a second. Information is left outside the frame; stories are fragmented in their retelling. Certain historical photographs have become iconic over time. My interest lies in images of American battle, violence, and trauma; those that have political and propagandic weight. Coded, controversial, and inherently emotional, these photographs have become …

Rui(N)Ation: Narratives Of Art And Urban Revitalization In Detroit, Jessica Ks Cappuccitti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation considers the City of Detroit as a case study for analyzing the complex role that artists and art institutions are playing in the potential re-growth and revitalization of the city. I specifically look at artists and arts organizations who are working against the popular narrative of Detroit as “ruin city.” Their efforts create counter narratives that emphasize stories of survival and showcase vibrant communities. By focussing on artist-led and institutional initiatives, I emphasize the importance of art in both community and narrative-building.

This research has taken the form of a written dissertation and two adapted projects, and positions …

Painting Ephemera In The Age Of Mass Production: American Trompe L’Oeil Painting And Visual Culture In The Late Nineteenth Century, Katherine Brunk Harnish

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study offers a fresh approach to investigating the modernization of visual media, exploring themes of media translation, appropriation, and the fine art and popular art divide. This dissertation focuses on paintings that represent prints and photographs in order to understand the relationships between all three media—relationships that changed drastically in late nineteenth-century America. William Harnett, John Haberle, and John Peto made many trompe l’oeil paintings that depict photographs, newspaper clippings, trade cards, and other ephemera. This project posits that these artists represented new media strategically to attract viewers well versed in these forms and to assert the continued relevance …

More Than A Spasm, Less Than A Sign: Queer Masculinity In American Visual Culture, 1915-1955, Thomas D. Baynes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research considers the contribution of visual culture to queer masculinity among white American men during a profound reorientation both in popular understandings and the practical conditions of eroticism between men. From about 1915 to 1955 a pragmatic libidinal economy centered on the theatrical effeminacy of “fairies” was displaced by one founded on the presumption of strongly delineated and relatively fixed hetero- and homo-sexual identities. Although medical discourses about queerness had been developing since the middle of the Nineteenth Century in Europe, what Americans of the opening decades of the twentieth century knew about queerness they learned unsystematically from hearsay, …

Autour De Frances Benjamin Johnston, Gertrude Käsebier Et Catharine Weed Barnes Ward: Stratégies Séparatistes Dans L’Exposition Des Femmes Photographes Américaines Au Tournant Des Xixe Et Xxe Siècles, Thomas Galifot

Artl@s Bulletin

Cette étude inclut une nouvelle analyse de l’exposition des photographes américaines conçue par Frances Benjamin Johnston à l’occasion de l’Exposition universelle de Paris de 1900. Dans une mise en perspective inédite, l’événement est également replacé dans un contexte américain élargi, riche en initiatives et en débats aussi fondateurs que méconnus. Cette enquête, qui donne lieu au premier panorama des expositions collectives de photographes américaines jusqu’en 1914, aboutit à une nécessaire remise à l'honneur de Catharine Weed Barnes Ward et de Gertrude Käsebier, personnalités dont le rôle central sur ces questions est largement mésestimé.

Seen And Unseen: Visualizing Contradictions In Postwar Japan, 1950s–1960s, Christina Lai

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a comparative study on how photography visualizes the political dynamics, ideological and psychological contradictions in postwar Japan. The discussion includes the exhibition The Family of Man in Tokyo (1956), Werner Bischof and Robert Capa’s photographs of Japan, and local photographers Ken Domon and Shomei Tomatsu.

Framing The City: Photography And The Construction Of São Paulo, 1930–1955, Danielle J. Stewart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 1930 and 1955 São Paulo, Brazil experienced a period of accelerated growth as the population nearly quadrupled from 550,000 to two million. In response, the municipal government undertook an aggressive public works program and commercial building boomed. Photographic representations of the cityscape were essential in directing modern São Paulo’s physical evolution because they reflected both the real—a chaotically growing megacity—and the ideal—a literally new, modernized space. This dissertation centers on four case studies of artists practicing different photographic modalities in order to analyze the symbiotic relationship between São Paulo's urban development and its photographic representation.

Construction sites, scaffolding, and …

Everything We Touch Is Touching Us, Molly Markow

Theses and Dissertations

EVERYTHING WE TOUCH IS TOUCHING US

MOLLY MARKOW

22 Pages

Images shape both personal and collective experiences of place in the Anthropocene. I am interested in the relationship of landscape and representation to purity politics, longing, and escape. I am critical of the role of idealized depictions of “nature” and question how images shape our notions of paradise, desire, and fantasy. Who benefits from notions of paradise, and who doesn’t? I ask these questions while searching for a way to embrace impurity and the beauty in contamination. How might we come to an understanding of the post-pure that leaves room …

Now Was Too Late, Kaleigh Rusgrove

MFA Statements

No abstract provided.

Access Point: Yuan Dongping’S Mental Patients In China And The State Of Chinese Documentary Photography In The 1990s, Sheung Ng

Theses and Dissertations

An investigation of the biographical, political, art historical, and social factors that could affect the discrepancy between the intention and reception of Chinese photographer Yuan Dongping’s Mental Patients in China photobook published in 1996, providing insight into the state of Chinese documentary photography publishing in the 1990s.

Modernizing The Arthurian Legend: Julia Margaret Cameron’S Photographic Illustrations Of Idylls Of The King, Hannah Rozenblat

Theses and Dissertations

This study identifies Julia Margaret Cameron’s contribution to the Arthurian Revival through Illustrations to the Idylls of the King and Other Poems, taking into consideration the development of narrative photography, the depiction of Arthurian themes in art and book illustration, theatricality and its connection to photography, and Victorian gender roles.

Carlisle Indian Boarding School Portraits: From The Nineteenth Century To Contemporary Art, Nina Leigh Fiorucci

Wayne State University Theses

This essay examines how Carlisle Indian Boarding School portraits portray transformation in students and the aesthetic history that perception holds with portrait painting, the ideological use of student portraits as illustrations of assimilation, and the continued emotional weight those portraits carry in contemporary media. Formal and aesthetic choices by the official school photographer and propagandistic uses by the school’s founder determine the role of nineteen-century assimilationist and racist ideology in the commission and dissemination of CIBS student portraits. Additionally, the appearance of these images in contemporary media and art provide a continued analysis of CIBS portraits as visual representatives of …

The Wild Beasts, Peter Cochrane

Theses and Dissertations

The Wild Beasts springs from my desire to thank my ever-expanding queer chosen family and mentors for their strength. Working through the often violent and othering aspects of the lens and photographic histories I create floral portraits responding to each person’s being and our relationship. Using the 19th century, 8x10 large format view camera—the same used by colonialists and ethnographers to “capture” the divinity of Nature—I erect each as a traditional still life studio setup at the threshold between the natural world and that constructed by humans. These environments speak both to the character of each friend and also to …

Mirror Images: Penelope Umbrico’S Mirrors (From Home Décor Catalogs And Websites), Jeanie Ambrosio

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the artwork’s title suggests, Penelope Umbrico’s "Mirrors (from Home Décor Catalogs and Websites)" (2001-2011), are photographs of mirrors that Umbrico has appropriated from print and web based home décor advertisements like those from Pottery Barn or West Elm. The mirrors in these advertisements reflect the photo shoot constructed for the ad, often showing plants or light filled windows empty of people. To print the "Mirrors," Umbrico first applies a layer of white-out to everything in the advertisement except for the mirror and then scans the home décor catalog. In the case of the web-based portion of the series, she …

Writing With Light: Cameraless Photography And Its Narrative In The 1920s, Karen K. Barber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cameraless photography’s resurgence in the 1920s has long been discussed by art historians and critics as either a facet of modernist “new photography,” or as a specialized practice associated with prominent figures of the interwar avant-garde. In their discussions of the medium, scholars have aligned cameraless photography with specific movements, groups, schools, or individuals, as a means of situating its emergence and subsequent popularity in the 1920s. This dissertation broadens the understanding of cameraless photography (also referred to as photograms) and its narrative by shifting the focus to the publications responsible for the medium’s articulation and dissemination in the years …

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.