Photography Commons^™

Offerings, Diana C. Patin

LSU Master's Theses

These photographs and writing are a set of offerings, collected as part of an intensive examination of myself and my contentious relationship with self-image. I first established which traits in my personality represent me best. I landed on my fatness, my queerness, my southernness, and my penchant for caring. Then I took a deep dive into each of those four themes with the objective of uncovering both the areas of exaltation and spaces of hurt within them. The images that result are both confrontational and gentle. It is my hope that the uncompromising honesty within these offerings communicates that while …

The Art Of Heritage And Mortality, Barbara Johanna Mileto

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Through my art I explore the formation of cultural and personal identity addressing the importance of heritage, ancestors, and religion in Latin-American culture, while I develop my unique deities and spiritual space, creating my own iconography. The pieces are strongly autobiographical, using my family members, and frequently lived experience as a subject. Furthermore, I am drawn to the circle of life and productive failures - beginnings, deaths, and transitions. - My work integrates two-dimensional and three-dimensional mediums, ranging from photography and printmaking to assemblage and textiles, video and digital.

Do You Want To Be Tender?, Leah Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, you will find a body of writings and artworks that reflect Leah Grant’s art practice and research. Throughout the paper, you will see Leah alternate back and forth between her artwork and writings. Leah Grant addresses her personal experience as a Black woman and what it means it explore vulnerability through understanding how the relationships around her affects the relationship she has with herself. Leah has created a collection of poems, prints, and video and audio collages that assist her with revealing and concealing.

Made Of Water, Covered In Mud, Nicole Norman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My fixation on water as metaphor is a product of my cosmic design; Scorpio sun, Pisces moon, Pisces rising. I am made of water, begging to be held. Anything liquid has this same desire. I use my art practice to examine the fluidity of physical and digital spaces; how they transform almost constantly. This is only possible through the use of containers that give form to abstract ideas and make them easier to drink (read: digest). Containers can vary in size and shape, but their purpose remains the same. A drinking glass, a swimming pool, a creek bed. These are …

Take Your Time, Terry A. Ratzlaff

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

I see the world not as one seamless world but as a world composed of other worlds, built on top and within one another. They exist harmoniously, bound not by space but by time. In an instant I can move from one world into another where I can exist in two worlds simultaneously—in space, I am here. In time, I am there.

Worldmaking is a conceptual process of seeing connections and making distinctions within our lived reality.1 It is a process of dividing and organizing parts into collections that represent different narratives. Only through suitable arrangements can we handle vast …

Auto®Ficción Latinx De Nueva York (1999–2020), Jacqueline Herranz Brooks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research on the intersection of Literary Criticism, Latino Studies, Persona Studies, and Performance Studies has led me to question the accepted definitions of autoficción (Doubrovsky, Gasparini, Alberca, Casas, Schlikers) and expand that definition into a more multifaceted and operational term. Hence, I created auto®ficción, a new term describing the hybrid creations of a group of underrepresented contemporary Latinx authors living/producing/circulating their work in New York City, during the first two decades of the 21^st Century. For these authors, their life experiences and quotidian uses of this city’s spaces are the subjects of their work. Auto®ficción draws attention …

The Gridded Time Of Waiting; Or Is Not Aristotle’S Metaphysics; Or A Kind Of Idealist Trap; Or In My Secret Life, Olivia Divecchia

Theses and Dissertations

Theoretical musings, descriptions, articulations of process, quotations and anecdotes form a constellation of thoughts about the trappings of the grid, ontology, the subject, the window, translation and other things.

Stranger’S Window, Nation’S Mirror, Kyoko Hamaguchi

Theses and Dissertations

In this text, I consider my identity as a Japanese immigrant in the United States during a global pandemic and its impact on my understanding of home as a liminal space. In particular, I discuss notions of home in relation to my work as an artist including two works that utilize the home-sharing platform Airbnb and three works that deal with the dichotomy of inside and outside.

An Escapist Utopia, Sara Eh Denney

Theses and Dissertations

As an active pursuit of avoiding excellence, my work acts as a space for failure, play, experimentation and imperfection. This document and final installation acts as a pause along a lifelong journey of object-making, creation, and spirituality. My work, specifically my working practice, rather than any one object or moment, is an escapist utopia for myself. My work is the process, the journey, not the ending or the completion of any one thing. The repetition, distortion, and production that I engage throughout my working practice acts as a spiritual exercise of meaning—making through creation. I fall deeply in love with …

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.

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, …

Creatively Exploring Self: Applying Organic Inquiry, A Transpersonal And Intuitive Methodology, Larisa J. Bardsley Phd

The Qualitative Report

This article explores the merit of using Organic Inquiry, a qualitative research approach that is most effectively applied to areas of psychological and spiritual growth. Organic Inquiry is a research approach where the psyche of the researcher becomes the instrument of the research, working in partnership with the experiences of participants and guided by liminal and spiritual influences. Organic Inquiry is presented as a unique methodology that can incorporate other non-traditional research methods, including intuitive, autoethnographic and creative techniques. The validity and application of Organic Inquiry, as well as its strengths and limitations are discussed in the light of the …

Transfer Of Vehicles Si Juki's Intellectual Property Rightsfrom Comics To Animation, Ehwan Kurniawan

International Review of Humanities Studies

Transfer of vehicles is removal and alteration. In a broader meaning, this term can even include the conversion of various types of science into works of art. Intellectual Property Rights are rights granted to the creators of Intellectual Property and include trademarks, copyrights, patents, industrial rights, and in some jurisdictional trade secrets. Art works including music and literature, as well as inventions, words, expressions, symbols, and designs can all be protected as intellectual property. Comics (noun) plural form, used with a single verb. Pictures and other symbols that are overlap (close together, next to each other) in sequentially thing, to …

Pleasure Is All Mine, Lola Ogbara

Graduate School of Art Theses

One’s identity is shaped by many factors such as race, culture, physical appearance, nationality, and religion—amongst many more. As an artist, the subjugation of identity in the context of race, gender, and sexuality is a world I examine closely. Subverting myths of sexual deviancy and racial inferiority that perpetually pathologizes Black feminine sexuality, I often use and reference my own body to create avenues of power through physical and intellectual pleasure. Through material use of clay, metal, photography, and installation, I emphasize on how contemporary Black social cultures are able to write their own narratives in order to further progressions …

Alternative Processes In Photography, Maria Politarhos

Open Educational Resources

Course Description:

This class introduces students to unconventional photographic processes. Students will explore historic methods and materials that allow the extension of photographic imagery beyond the standard black and white or color print. The class will experiment with handmade emulsions and papers, incorporating photographic imagery into new and varied contexts such as drawings, paintings, and made books.

Changing Perceptions Of The Carceral Space Through Photography: The Tehachapi Project By Jr, Alexi Butts

Scripps Senior Theses

“Can art change the world?”

In his global art practice, French artist JR transforms overlooked communities into valued canvases. With an approach rooted in collaboration, JR’s large-scale public photographic installations integrate the built environment into a visual experience of human life.

In October, 2019, JR and his team entered the maximum security prison in Tehachapi, California to embark on a new collaborative project: “Tehachapi.” This paper explores the impact of “Tehachapi” as it extends beyond the physical photograph wheat-pasted on the floor of the prison’s courtyard to touch on issues of humanity, power and accessibility. Created as a collage of …

Chupa Chuparosas Y Chupacabras, Ruben U. Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

A Rascuache Nahual that uses therianthropy on the border between the US and Mexico border.

Visual Literacy Lesson Plan: Color Photography, Ian Mcdermott

Open Educational Resources

This session focuses on building subject knowledge in photography and finding background information on an artist. The lesson begins with students closely examining a photograph, following the Visual Thinking Strategies model (https://vtshome.org/). Following the exercise, students are divided into groups and select a monograph on a photographer. As a group, they research the photographer using the book and other library resources (subscription databases) and open web resources (artist’s website, museum websites). The session ends with student groups giving 2-5 minute presentations on a photographer.

Plausible Expositions With Possible Expeditions, Nikolaus D. James

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Influenced by video games and cinema, in this body of work, Plausible Expositions with Possible Expeditions, I use objects to create scenarios that suggest a narrative. The scenes are then photographed and displayed through cathode-ray tube televisions and viewers use their own knowledge and ideas about the objects to create that narrative. Each of these objects has is own data set, and the most common have a universal data set—information surrounding the object that is widely recognized, much like how a crowbar is commonly associated with crime. Similar to playing a video game, an algorithm is used when viewing my …

Kavana: Photography, Jewish Storytelling, And Memory, Hannah Altman

Theses and Dissertations

Jewish thought suggests that the memory of an action is as primary as the action itself. This is to say that when my hand is wounded, I remember other hands. I trace ache back to other aches - when my mother grabbed my wrist pulling me across the intersection, when my great-grandmother’s fingers went numb on the ship headed towards Cuba fleeing the Nazis, when Miriam’s palms enduringly poured water for the Hebrews throughout their desert journey - this is how the Jew is able to fathom an ache. Because no physical space is a given for the Jewish diaspora, …

How Many Licks, Ashley Goodwin

Theses and Dissertations

Arts communities are currently reevaluating and restructuring power dynamics within their systems to accommodate a broader range of experience and subjectivity. However, the forces of control are still largely dictated by a broader patriarchal culture. This complicated, tangled dynamic is the focus of my research. Female artists who make work about men or about patriarchy more generally, are consistently subjected to its influence as the dominant cultural experience—the invisible “truth” that everything either is, or acts in reaction to its position. In reality, patriarchy is no longer gender specific. I will be addressing my relationship to it as well as …

Reaching Across Community Lines: How Informal Visual Art Educational Programming Bridges The Gap, Janelle O'Malley

Student Projects

Economic disparity in underserved communities is in large part responsible for a lack of access to quality visual arts education. The communities most in need are often hit first when it comes to funding the arts, and the students suffer these financial consequences. How can we ensure those underserved communities receive a complete education with the visual arts? What other ways can access to the visual arts be provided to schools?

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

College of Arts & Sciences Senior 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 …

Biafra And The Politics Of Humanitarian Consumption, Chi-Chi Ayalogu

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-70) is overwhelmingly represented by photographs of malnourished, sickly looking and often protein-deficient children, iconic and complex images that encapsulate the narrative of an impoverished black Africa in the western imagination. While these photographs reveal the grievous, inhuman atrocities that took place in Biafra, they have come to be negatively associated with the entirety of black Africa, as they tend to validate inaccurate ideas of homogeneity on the continent. Yet despite their homogenizing effect, Biafran leaders re-appropriated images of suffering for propaganda use, specifically to elicit a humanitarian response and thereby procure aid and resources from denizens …

Out Of The Box: Hiraeth: The Nostalgia Within Abandoned Homes, Jessica Mcdaniel

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Student researcher Jessica McDaniel explains why abandoned houses obtained a reputation for horror, as well as how this fear is not all that remains in what were once homes.

Kazua Melissa Vang, Justin Beales

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Kazua Melissa Vang is a Hmong American filmmaker, visual artist, photographer, teaching artists, production manager, and producer based in Minnesota. Melissa is currently a lead artist as well as a teaching artist for In Progress. Her most two most recent photography works were showcased at In Progress under the exhibit, “NEXUS: Honoring the Self-Taught Photographic Artist” (2016), and “Hmong Tattoo,”(2017). Her current photography project is taking portraits of Hmong refrigerators and freezers. From her collection “F R I D G E S,” was featured in the exhibit, “Foodway”(Summer 2018) at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and is currently …

Kai Duc Luong Interview, Stuart Hutson

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio Born in 1975 in Phnom-Penh, KAI-DUC LUONG fled the oppressive Khmer Rouge regime from Cambodia to Vietnam to France, where his family settled in Paris, in 1978. KAI-DUC operates between Chicago and Paris. His artistic projects include video (art / doc / film), photography, and mixed media installations. His unconventional path as a self-taught outsider artist, trained in digital communication & systems engineering, gives him a unique perspective, at times questioning subject matters through the understanding of transmission and systems (e.g. the primary emotions, the five senses, the stages of grief, the art industry). His works have been …

Youngsun Choi Interview, Adam Martinez

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: YoungSun Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea and is currently living in Chicago, IL. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2018 and her Bachelor of Arts from San Francisco State University majoring in Studio Art with an emphasis in Photography in 2015 where she was awarded the Strauss Scholarship for Photography as well as the Sher-Right Art Scholarship.

Kelvin Burzon Interview, Maya Boustany

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Kelvin Burzon is a Filipino-American artist whose work explores intersections of sexuality, race, gender and religion. He was born on March 26, 1989, in Bataan, Philippines. As a child growing up in a Filipino culture, Burzon’s initial ambition was to become a Catholic Priest. “I have always been interested in the religion’s role in culture and familial relationships and have been drawn to the religion’s traditions, imagery, theatricality, and its psychological vestige.” His work is inspired by cerebral influences growing up in and around the church. “My cultural and familial identity, my memories as a child, cannot be separated from …

The Standard Model, Manny Llanura

CGU MFA Theses

Photography is my medium. “The Standard Model” is a body of work created from photographs of the Los Angeles Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2019 Collection runway.

Each final work starts with over a thousand photos that become the raw materials from which I eventually produce my final piece. Deep in the final piece are the lights, shadows, hues, tones of a themed shoot.

I believe that the ability to focus on what is in front of you is not directly proportional to how detailed the image is. My goal is to incite appreciation of what humans have done or …