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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Capturing The Cape : A Photographic Case Study Of The Cape Range Bioregion Of Northwest Australia ; Straight Lines : A Photographic Case Study Of The Cape Range Bioregion Of Northwest Australia, David J. Bradley Jan 2012

Capturing The Cape : A Photographic Case Study Of The Cape Range Bioregion Of Northwest Australia ; Straight Lines : A Photographic Case Study Of The Cape Range Bioregion Of Northwest Australia, David J. Bradley

Theses : Honours

In Australia, as with much of the world, landscape photography has played a significant role in raising awareness of human impact on the environment. For the most part, this awareness raises questions of conservation and preserving the natural world. Landscape photography commonly depicts environmental issues in one of two ways: the damaging effects of humanity’s mastery over the environment; or the sublime wonder of nature. In effect, the messages sent by landscape photography are singular, describing either nature, or culture. However, with an intention to develop a more sustainable viewpoint concerning humanity’s relationships with the environment, landscape photography could be …


Mcmansions: Re-Presenting A Divided, Subdivided And Uncanny Suburban Landscape, Mike Gray Jan 2009

Mcmansions: Re-Presenting A Divided, Subdivided And Uncanny Suburban Landscape, Mike Gray

Theses : Honours

This exegesis speculates on the rise and spread of 'McMansions' by exploring possible reactions to this architecture and the contextual dimensions of my photographic response. The exegesis aligns aspects of the 'Uncanny' (Freud, 1919) to new trends in domestic architecture and topographical photography. By pictorially offering a counter-narrative to more conventional representations of the 'dream home', it ironically demonstrates that some houses can be viewed as unhomely. The exegesis explains how cultural anxieties can be experienced when viewing contemporary trends in domestic architecture within new suburban developments. It does this by aligning the increased use of featurism (Boyd, 1980) in …


M/Others : One Lens, Multiple Maternities, Toni Wilkinson Jan 2007

M/Others : One Lens, Multiple Maternities, Toni Wilkinson

Theses : Honours

This body of photographic portraits re/presents the maternal relationship as a significant one in a cultural economy than 'downgrades motherhood', and fails to adequately recognise the contribution of mothers to society, as they struggle to uphold self and family in contemporary life. Throughout this work, which fuses religious visual art principles and photographic documentary, a more complex, powerful maternal figure emerges than the singular, passive and restrictive example of motherhood, commonly portrayed in art history. I undertake a comparative analysis between traditional Madonna and child icons and contemporary female photographers involved with maternal themes, to highlight that certain photographs facilitate …


Death Lilly : Performing The 'Flower Girl' Role In The Age Of Consumption, Catherine Gomersall Jan 2006

Death Lilly : Performing The 'Flower Girl' Role In The Age Of Consumption, Catherine Gomersall

Theses : Honours

This self-reflexive photomedia project interrogates the 'flower girl' role as a cultural fetishism of 'innocent' white-girl femininity, which I claim is perpetuated in the bridal fantasy. In my photomedia work the theme of 'death' and the uncanny is explored as well as the themes of 'wildness' and 'violence' in order to subvert the dominant discourse of ideal white femininity which is defined in popular culture by a sanitised bourgeois aesthetic. I attack the bourgeois surface of the bridal magazine in my artwork as I perform the 'flower girl' role in the context of popular culture and capitalism. The flower girl …


The White Death: Representations Of Salt Affected Landscapes In The Wheatbelt, Grant Currall Jan 2006

The White Death: Representations Of Salt Affected Landscapes In The Wheatbelt, Grant Currall

Theses : Honours

This exegesis examines the significance of salt-affected landscapes in Western Australia's Wheatbelt, particularly sites affected due to pastoral settlement. It explores ways in which landscape imagery has been constructed and controlled by cultures to represent a particular relationship between settlement and the land. A focus on both American and Australian photographic practitioners and their understanding of landscape aesthetics will be incorporated to reveal how unconventional subject matter like dryland salinity can be re-presented to provide an alternative perspective of cultures relationship with nature in the Wheatbelt. Finally, an enquiry into the impact of national identity on landscape will also explore …


East O' The Sun And West O' The Moon: The Construction Of National Identity In Norwegian Fashion Photography, Anne-Britt Kjoensburg Jan 2006

East O' The Sun And West O' The Moon: The Construction Of National Identity In Norwegian Fashion Photography, Anne-Britt Kjoensburg

Theses : Honours

This exegesis compliments my photographic project which was to produce a body of work that explores Norwegian identity through fashion using myths and iconography to communicate Norwegian-ness, and depicts the Norwegian lifestyle in a surprising and humorous way. My aim has been to find out if there is any distinctive aesthetic approach/style that constructs, defines and reproduces Norwegian identity, and if Norwegian fashion photography is being influenced by the resurgence of interest in Norwegian style. I have looked at how humans use fashion as a technique to construct various identities rather than a mask that covers the self and how …


Time In Kyrgyzstan, Robert Mcpherson Jan 2006

Time In Kyrgyzstan, Robert Mcpherson

Theses : Honours

The topic of the exegesis is travel documentary photography. The exegesis is based on previous written academic work on travel documentary photography and it is related to my own experience when photographing the people and the landscapes of Kyrgyzstan. In the exegesis I argue that travel documentary photography is highly subjective and ambiguous. There is no such thing as a purely objective representation of the 'Other'. Rather it is and illusion of objectivity that emerges through the eye of the photographer. In travel documentary photography I argue that we make the 'Others' seem less like us than they are because …


Farming At Wylie : A Technical Biography 1933- 1963, Bruce Rhind Jan 2005

Farming At Wylie : A Technical Biography 1933- 1963, Bruce Rhind

Theses : Honours

The genesis of this project was my father Graeme Rhind's collection of photographs of farming in Western Australia, dating back to 1929 when his parents first began farming in the wheatbelt near Wyalkatchem. I was interested in the way these photographs illustrated changing farming practices during the following three decades, and how they provided both documentary evidence and stimulated recall of memory. I was also concerned by the loss of knowledge of old photographic collections. The photographs are insufficient by themselves because each image requires specialised knowledge which the viewer may not possess, and that knowledge is lost with the …


Photography In Madagascar: Magical Realism As An Ambiguous Space, Talhy Stotzer Jan 2005

Photography In Madagascar: Magical Realism As An Ambiguous Space, Talhy Stotzer

Theses : Honours

The visual component of this project consists of a photographic representation of my experience in a Vezo fishing village on the southwest coast of Madagascar. In the exegesis, magical realism provides a theoretical framework to describe both the use of the photographic medium and the content of my images. Away from both the rigid narratives of modernity and its realist perspective and from the sceptical nihilism of extreme postmodemity, magical realism allows for an ambiguous space in which expression and subjectivity are interconnected with empirical reality. Moreover, this concept which acknowledges a plurality of small and, sometimes contradictory, narratives to …


Picturing A Postcolonial Australia : Breaking The 'White' Norm In Contemporary Creative Practice, Rebekah Rousi Jan 2004

Picturing A Postcolonial Australia : Breaking The 'White' Norm In Contemporary Creative Practice, Rebekah Rousi

Theses : Honours

This dissertation is about addressing social issues relating to colonial encounters from the perspective of a 'White' colonial Australian artist. The discussion seeks to address representational imbalances which occur within image construction as the result of a history of Imperial investment in defining the 'civilised Self against the non-European 'primitive Other' (Said, 1978). The label 'White' is analysed in terms of its contradictions and generalisations, where it is linked to a culturally assumed 'Self' positioning of human centrality and neutrality. This centrality (humanity) was used by Imperialists to justify reasoning behind colonial expansion. The thriving mechanisms of Euro-centric perception are …


The Abject In The Technological Other, Alex Bradley Jan 2004

The Abject In The Technological Other, Alex Bradley

Theses : Honours

A photographic project and exegesis demonstrating artificial intelligence and artificial life as occurrences of the abject. In the photographic project '0=2', the technologies of artificial intelligence and artificial life are examined in relation to identity, via an elaboration of the psychoanalytic concert of the 'abject'. An exegesis of the creative project contains an investigation of computer technologies in regard to identity, an analysis of the basic concepts and paradigms of the sciences of artificial intelligence and artificial life, and an elaboration of the psychoanalytic concept of the abject - demonstrating A.l. and a-life as cultural instantiations of abjection. In addition, …


Street Photography: An Approach To Strangers: Casual, Close And Personal Encounters, Flavia M. Schuster Jan 2003

Street Photography: An Approach To Strangers: Casual, Close And Personal Encounters, Flavia M. Schuster

Theses : Honours

Street photographers can either camouflage or reveal their identities to the strangers they photograph. By choosing to remain anonymous, photographers often create images in which only their subjects are exposed. By unveiling their identities however, they often create images in which their interaction becomes evident in the resulting images. Casual Encounters looks at the mechanisms employed by photographers that choose to remain anonymous in contrast to the myth of the flâneur. Close Encounters looks at the mechanisms employed between strangers to deal with their daily interactions in urban environments. Personal Encounters serves to explain my own approach to the strangers …


Blood, Sweat & Tears : The Photographs Of Bill Henson, Deborah Pearson Jan 1997

Blood, Sweat & Tears : The Photographs Of Bill Henson, Deborah Pearson

Theses : Honours

This study interprets, evaluates, and contributes to current theories and debates surrounding Bill Henson's photographs. Henson's photographs have been largely circulated as autonomous, fine-art "objects" and interpretations of this work have generally concentrated on representation/s of the body, emphasising the ephemeral and ambiguous. This study critically analyses such discourse so as to examine the assumptions that cluster around the body and bodily representation. The aim is not to judge the photographs, but to interrogate potentially different readings and interpretations. Recognising my own circumscription within this research, I remain self-critical toward my own conclusions. The methodology employed is interdisciplinary, bringing together …