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Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Cultural Anthropology
“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales
“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.
The Politics Of Twilights: Notes On The Semiotics Of Horizon Photography, Michael W. Raphael
The Politics Of Twilights: Notes On The Semiotics Of Horizon Photography, Michael W. Raphael
Publications and Research
Visual sociology is crucial for exploring the indexical meanings that thick description cannot capture within a cultural setting. This paper explores how such meanings are created within a subset of the domain of photography. Using data gathered over several years, I constructed the semiotic code ‘horizon’ photographers use when ‘in the field’ for photographing periods of twilight. This code explains the relevance of subject matter to the photograph’s aesthetics. Specifically, I detail how ‘the horizon’ communicates the potential for the photographer to ‘capture’ the index of a symbol that later permits the photographer to culturally mark scenes with ‘light’. In …