Theory and Criticism Commons^™

Julia Margaret Cameron's Photographs As Paintings, Winnie Wu

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

This paper argues that in order to better understand the photographic techniques, and compositional choices employed by Julia Margaret Cameron, one must analyze them in terms of the language of paintings. By using photography to stage painterly tableaus, Cameron blurred reality and fiction, the result of which is the equalization of all those she photographed, be they famed Victorian poets or female maids.

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

Franz Roh And Visual Juxtaposition In Foto-Auge, Irini Zervas

Theses and Dissertations

This study of Foto-Auge (1929) is grounded on the approach of Franz Roh and aims to unlock the book’s meaning through an analysis of layout and visual sequence. This thesis also demonstrates how Foto-Auge proclaims photography’s ability not merely to record, but to disrupt any sense of reality in images.

Photo Synthesis: The Expatriate Family Album As Historiography, Kamayani Sharma Ms

Proceedings from the Document Academy

I want to look at the expatriate family album as a site of history-writing.

Through an examination of three photographs from my childhood in West Asia, I try to think about the idea of historical space and time through the visual narratives available to me of my own family.

This essay will be an exploration of the way in which nostalgia for a personal past gets imbricated within the shared experience of a bygone cultural moment.

I am interested in how an encounter with visual material from private archives initiates memory work and how these traces from the past can …

Au-Delà De La Nature : The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories De Julian Charrière, Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou

The Goose

In this short article - case study, I explore the question of how art may help us reflect on the new conception of nature that the Anthropocene confronts us with. I focus on the photographic series The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories I,II,III (2013) by Swiss artist Julian Charrière and its reassessment of an idea of nature inherited from the romantic period. I analyse the way in which these pictures reinterpret romantic landscape painting in order to suggest an equal relation of human and nature, where human and non-human entities hold equal sway. My theoretical framework is based on Timothy Morton’s …

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …

Sands Of Desire:The Creative Restlessness Of Lee Miller's Egyptian Period, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

"As a spectator, I wanted to explore photography not as a question (a theme) but as a wound,"Roland Barthes writes in Camera Lucida. Similarly, in the famous first lines of his surrealist book Nadja, Andre Breton concluded that the question he should ask himself should be "not who I am, but whom I haunt." Could either of these quotes apply to Lee Miller's aesthetic as well ? While her photographs during her period of "apprenticeship" with Man Ray focused on the female body, and the ones in her studio in New York on elegant portraiture, it is during her period …

Radical Dissonance And Haunted Gestures: Rupture And Reverence In The Artwork Of Aja Mujinga Sherrard, Aja M. Sherrard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper serves to establish the studio practice of Aja Mujinga Sherrard within the framework of conceptual art, touching on the flexible use of media, the subversive or political nature of the work, and its relationship to movements and disciplines such as Feminism and Poststructuralism.

The section entitled “Race and Incoherence” addresses the practice of Radical Dissonance—or the creation of ruptures within commonly accepted concepts and social constructions—through the Costuming Kinship Series, 13≠12≠12.2 (Genetics Project), and Body Double. The section entitled ”Art, Loss, and the Unspeakable” traces an emotional shift in her work and speaks directly to the pieces …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

Portrayal, Kathryn A. Wilson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is in addition to my thesis series, Portrayal, a group of selected photographs. In this essay I outline the contents and developments of the series of photographs by the same name. It includes information on the artistic techniques employed, concepts and considerations taken into account when making the photographs including the relationship with and presentation of the subject, the exhibition of the photographs, and influences on the specific composition and tone of the photographs.

The images in Portrayal are not candid or objective views. Each is constructed based upon the negotiations with the subject and represent an edited …

Antithetical Commentaries On X, Y And The Disruption Of Being, Eva Rocha

Theses and Dissertations

Through discursive essays and poetic narrative, Antithetical Commentaries on X, Y and the Disruption of Being explores the tenuous relationship between modes of measurement and the struggle for human relevance in the post-contemporary digital age. In the introductory essay, “Not the Feather, but the Bird”, I give an overview of the inherent problems of object-oriented ontology, and how it relates to aesthetics and social issues of our times. In the Developmental Overview, I detail how I developed my installation approach and techniques, particularly with regard to the three-way dynamic of the artist:work:viewer relationship and how it can encourage …

The Misconception Of Knowing, The Invention Of Time; Curiosities & Introspections Of Vernacular Photography, Patricia D. Drummond

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Misconception of Knowing, the Invention of Time; Curiosities & Introspections of Vernacular Photography is a body of work that combines photography, artist books, and alternative processes in a series of pieces that explore the synergy between the act of creating vernacular or common photography, the photograph in its many forms, and the interaction with the photographic image at all the stages of its existence. It also exists in conjunction with this written monograph, which supports and gives insight into the work. Through the use of poems, sketchbook musings, the history of photography, critical theory and social norms within photography, …

Place Reimagined, Michelle Unger

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This book shows the creative process and final product of my Independent Study Project, conducted in Prague as part of a semester study abroad program. The project started with interviewing four Czech graphic designers who described places in Prague that are especially meaningful to them. After collecting and transcribing their stories related to their places of inspiration, I visited the locations myself and photographed the locations with sensitivity to the details the artists had emphasized as unique to their experience of the place. While at each site, I also photographed elements of the locations that I personally found interesting and …

The Face Of Our Wartime, Sharon Sliwinski

Data and Test Instruments

This paper considers a turn toward portraiture amongst contemporary photojournalists who have covered the War on Terror. A series of wartime faces is examined in order to consider the way prolonged conflict flattens our visual landscape.

Tapestry Of Space: Domestic Architecture And Underground Communities In Margaret Morton’S Photography Of A Forgotten New York, Irina Nersessova

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This article addresses the impact urban space has on individuals through the use of Situationist International theory and psychogeography. Representations of homelessness in New York in Margaret Morton's photography are used to demonstrate the interconnectedness among space, people, and social issues. Social issues manifest themselves in urban decay, and the inhabitants react to this phenomenon emotionally and artistically. Some inhabitants demonstrate their relationship with space by responding with material production of housing and art, which they accomplish by building without exploiting the environment the way the manufacturing of commodities often does.

Garry Winogrand: The Art Of Street Photography, Micayla Beuley

Honors Projects

This exhibition proposal, designed for the Dorothy Uber Bryan Gallery located in the Fine Arts Center at Bowling Green State University, is designed to enhance gallery patrons’ understanding of and appreciation for street photography through a biographical analysis of the works of Garry Winogrand. In addition to presenting 30 photographs by this esteemed photographer, patrons are invited to actively participate in the creation of street photographs and provides a unique opportunity to display them alongside that of a professional in a gallery setting. This exhibition proposal includes a curator’s statement, formal exhibition catalog essay, list of works proposed, detailed floor …

Many Worlds Converge Here: Vision And Identity In American Indian Photography, Alicia L. Harris

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Photographs of Native Americans taken by Frank A. Rinehart at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898 were then and continue to be part of the construction of indigenous identities, both by Anglo-Americans and Natives. This thesis analyzes the ramifications of Rinehart’s portraits and those of his peers as well as Native American artists in the 20^th and 21^st centuries who have sought to re-appropriate these images to make them empowering icons of individual or tribal identity rather than erasure of culture.

This thesis comprises two sections. In the first section, the analysis is focused on the historical …

New York Transfixed: Notes On The Expression Of Fear, Sharon Sliwinski

Data and Test Instruments

What does fear look like? What can photography reveal of the unconscious dimensions of terror? Working with the largest photographic archive devoted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City, this chapter studies the visual inscription of terror in the bodily gestures of eyewitness, gestures that were captured by citizen photographers.

A Painful Labor: Photography And Responsibility, Sharon Sliwinski

Data and Test Instruments

This paper considers the tension between photography and responsibility despite the avalanche of objections regarding documentary’s false promise to awaken social conscience. By examining the encounter with images of suffering through a psychoanalytic register, the paper tries to articulate what Barthes describes as the ‘painful labour’ of responding to the photographic other – an encounter that illuminates the limit of the spectator’s ability to respond. Photographs provide an occasion to register this limit, which, I argue, opens up the spectator’s traditional notions of responsibility from a set of moral duties towards a questioning of the ethical relation.

A Model Of Human Scale Tested On Rural Landscape Scenes, Richard K. Sutton

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Landscapes such as the Great Plains have been described as lacking human scale. This study developed a quantitative model of human scale and compared it with viewers' perceptions of visual structure. Visual structure was selected from the physical features of Otoe County, NE, forming boundaries, found as ground textures, vegetative screens, and topographic breaks and was depicted in photographs of landscape scenes. The model used and tested nine classes of scale based on grain and extent of the photos rated by viewers against those from the model. Viewers identified boundaries representing grain and extent that were synthesized into a viewer-perceived …

Icarus Returned: The Falling Man And The Survival Of Antiquity, Sharon Sliwinski

Data and Test Instruments

This chapter examines the so-called "Falling Man" photograph: Richard Drew's infamous image of an anonymous man in free fall, following his jump from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Using Aby Warburg's iconographical method, I read this figure as a latter-day Icarus, putting Drew's photograph in dialogue with other representations of Icarus as a way to explore the image's unconscious force.

On Photographic Violence, Sharon Sliwinski

Data and Test Instruments

This paper explores the significance of photographic violence in relation to a single defaced image found during the Bosnian War. The single example of pictorial violence opens a set of questions interrogating the nature of human aggression: What is the status of violence carried out in effigy? Can this particular example of defacement open understanding into the other forms of violence that took place during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia? How does the image come to be marked by affect but also serve as the medium of its transmission? And finally, why does photography lend itself so easily to …

James Abbott Mcneill Whistler: Photographs Of His Paintings And The Art Of Photography, Hiroko Suda

Dissertations and Theses

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is an important figure in the development of art photography. His lyrical and atmospheric images were not only admired by modernist painters, but also influenced many photographers who aspired to be artists. His treatment of the subject matter, careful selection of paper, and arduous printing process gave profound inspiration to many of the early twentieth century photographers.

Nonetheless, Whistler's own attitude towards the medium of photography was quite elusive. He never took the camera seriously as a tool of his artistic expression and photography was never included in his oeuvre. The artist never explained his …