Photography Commons^™

Illusory Perspectives: Edward Weston, Jeremy Razook

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

Photographer Edward Weston was famously able to capture unexpected beauty—no matter if his subject was fruit or human. This essay locates Weston's artistic vision within the modernist movement of the first half of the twentieth century and uses two well-known images to illustrate Weston's unique talent for transcending the boundaries between human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate, being and nonbeing in his desire to encourage the experience of introspection and contemplation in viewers.

Socially Engaged Practice: A Reflection On Values, Theory And Writing, Alan Grossman, Anthony Haughey

Books/Book chapters

No abstract provided.

So Much Apparent Nothing, Emily Mcbride

Theses and Dissertations

This document contains reflections on motivations behind selected works leading up to and including my thesis exhibition so much apparent nothing. Through journal excerpts and analysis of my own psychology, I attempt to put into words my thoughts concurrent to my making, indirect as they may be. The following text shares my personal conflicts and ideologies surrounding art-making, the permanence of objects, and the acceptance of an identity in flux.

Magic At The Crossroads: The Rise Of The Video Essay, Morganne Tinsley August

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the birth, rise in popularity, and evolution of the video essay, a subgenre of the essay found recently in online literary journals. Chapter one provides a brief history of the alphabetic essay as it expands to include photo essays, audio essays, and essay-films. The second chapter outlines the history of the online literary journal and John Bresland’s role in the introduction of the video essay as it appears in online journals. Chapter three contains an examination of the way image, text, and sound function in video essays and the tools and strategies essayists are using to create …

Photography, Writing, Literature: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Brunet And Beckman And Weissberg, Geert Vandermeersche

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Culture On The Move: Depression-Era Documentary And Migrant California, Joseph Entin

Criticism

California on the Breadlines: Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and the Making of a New Deal Narrative by Jan Goggans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Pp. 368. $40.00 cloth.

Gather, Katie M. Meek

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Food is both basic and multifaceted. It nourishes satisfies, levels, defines and gathers us. Food unifies and brings people together as part of the human experience. When people embrace food and make it their own, it can shape and define their lives in big ways.

Food can cultivate a lifestyle, preserve cultural identity, foster a small business, nurture relationships and serve a community.

This project is a documentation of five different groups of people that experience food in uniquely different ways. Through photo essays and written stories I strive to capture what how food brings people together in specific ways …

Launching And Maintaining A Wedding Photography Business, Shelley D. Owens

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

With the popularity of the wedding industry in America perpetuated by social media, blogs, and other networking sites, thousands of self-employed photographers have set out to make a living documenting the most important day of some people’s lives. Digital photography appeals to many for its convenience, but having a camera does not make one a professional photographer. What separates the hobbyists from the professionals is the development of skills and creative vision and the proper legal and business licensing to make a profit off of their wedding photography. Shelley Owens provides her own experiences as a professional wedding photographer as …

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 …

Scouted: An Inadvertent Archive From The Search For A Cinematic Vegas, Catherine Borg

Occasional Papers

This paper highlights the transformation of materials within the Mancuso Collection from utilitarian location scouting materials in the service of a film to historical record of the Vegas valley in 1994-95. Destined for disposal, these displaced artifacts are also an important record and reminder of the hidden labor and creative output of the many people who contribute to cultural products.

Identity Crafting: Reading The Agency And Art Implicit In Selfies, Margaret Nichols

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

The aim of this article is to unravel the craftsmanship of online identities implicit in taking and sharing selfies and to measure the immediate or resulting violence by imposed definition upon the subject-photographer. This paper especially focuses on the identity building of young women on the social networking platform Instagram. Crucial to the research are Susan Sontag's work on photography philosophy relating to violence inflicted upon subjects, Gregory Ulmer's work on electracy, and Liana De Girolami Cheney's research into artistic conventions of self-portraiture dating back from the Renaissance to the present. The highly constructed nature of selfies, an emerging art …

Speaking For The Picture: Memory, Image, And Identity In The Works Of W.G. Sebald And Chris Marker, Connor Mccormick

Theses and Dissertations

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the development of technologies for externalizing human memory beyond writing, painting, and sculpting. These modes of visual representation, namely photography and cinema carried with them a purported objective representation of reality, which has been used to create classifications, divide people groups, and construct grand historical narratives used to marginalize those that do not fit within the hegemonic center. Looking to the works of writer W.G. Sebald, and filmmaker Chris Marker, we see a complication of the divide between visual and verbal texts, as each artist deconstructs their own medium’s conventions. Using theories of ekphrasis …

"The Falling Man" As Viewed In The Lens Of The "Public Sphere", Laura Reinacher

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Transmedial Documentation For Non-Visual Image Access, Melody J. Mccotter

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In my doctoral studies on information accessibility for the individual who is blind or visually impaired, I’ve been exploring the ways we can make image documents more accessible. This requires using an alternative sensory modality, and translating the document into a different format. The questions that arise when we consider this process are many, but among them are:

• Is it the same document once we’ve converted it to an audio narrative about the work, or a 3D topographic map of an artwork, or a musical interpretation?
• If it is not the same document, how truthful can the “trans-medial” translation be …

The Paradox Of Commercial Photography: Power And Sexuality In Models, Christina Bell

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

Commercial photography has a tendency to force upon us a standard template of what the ideal person is or looks like. Unfortunately, the artificial standard is horribly unachievable and detrimental to physical and mental health, which produces sentiments of insufficiency and abjection with the self, especially among young impressionable girls. In a sick - and very modern - twist of evolutionary progress we find ourselves idealizing the depictions of models appearing to be on the verge of starvation. This article examines the power and sexuality in models produced through commercial photography and its effects on society at-large.

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.

Gilded Age Visual Media As The Impetus For Social Change: Jacob Riis’S Reform Photography And The Antecedents Of Documentary Film, Denitsa Yotova

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This study examines the birth and evolution of the social documentary genre in visual media. It suggests that a mixture of ideology, technology, and social awareness are necessary for a successful social reform. It finds that despite the limitations of technology during the nineteenth century, social documentaries were produced long before they were part of the genres of photography and film. By focusing on the work of Danish photographer Jacob Riis and tracing the emergence of film, this study demonstrates a connection between documentary film and Riis’s social documentary photography and public slide exhibitions. The study concludes that in order …

Marshall University Special Collections Photo Preservation Workshop, Caitlin Noelle Walker, Nat Debruin

Librarian Research

Workshop presented at the West Virginia Library Conference in Flatwoods, WV on April 2, 2014. The workshop focused on the history of photography with an emphasis on identifying different types of photographic processes and images. The second half of the workshop provided the participants with knowledge about the environmental and chemical challenges to preserving photographic images and possible solutions to solving problems in their institution's collections.

Images For A Nation: The Role Of Conservation Photography In American Environmentalism, Nathaniel W. Yale

Pomona Senior Theses

Photographs have long been integral in revealing American values, ideals, and identity. Accordingly, a study of environmental, or "conservation," imagery offers insight into America’s relationship with the natural world. In an examination of key figures and their conservation photography work, this thesis explores how the national conservation dialogue has been shaped by powerful images that, in some cases, even led to crucial acts of federal conservation. The first section highlights four photographers and their context and influence in this dialogue: W.H. Jackson’s photographs from Hayden’s 1871 survey of Yellowstone, Carleton Watkins’ work at Yosemite and Mariposa Grove in the 1860s, …

The Art / Crime Archive: An Anti-Boredom Space, Paul Kaplan, Brian Goeltzenleuchter, Dan Salmonson

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This paper reports on an ongoing web-based project devoted to the study of deviant art and creative crime called the Art / Crime Archive: www.artcrimearchive.org. The Art / Crime Archive (ACA) is a collaborative laboratory, teaching center, and web-based platform devoted to the study of this space. The ACA is organized by an artist, a criminologist, and a computer engineer. The working process of the ACA involves locating, archiving, and discussing visual, audio, and text artifacts that support this shadow space. The work product is a dynamic archive which can be configured for a multiplicity of contexts—art exhibitions, academic …

Edward Steichen And Hollywood Glamour, Alisa Reynolds

Theses and Dissertations--Art and Visual Studies

As a word, glamour is hard to define, but is instantly recognizable. Its association with Hollywood movie stars fully emerged in the 1930s in the close-up celebrity portraits by photographers like George Hurrell. The aesthetic properties in these images that help create glamour are characterized by the Modernist style, known for sharp focus, high contrast, seductive poses, and the close-up (tight framing). My essay will explore the origins of the visual aesthetics of glamour, arguing that their roots can be found in the still life photographs of the 1910s, produced by fine art photographers such as Edward Steichen. This essay …

Disidentified Masculinities, Jacqueline Hope Freedman

Scripps Senior Theses

My capstone is a conversation of the Millennial Generation’s views of individual identity and masculinity, with the hopes of deconstructing the socially constructed and exclusive notions of masculinity by defining a generation’s “common sense.”

My piece is inspired by the portraiture of Chad States in Masculinities (2011) as well as Loren Cameron’s work in Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits (1996). The theoretical basis of my project relies heavily on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “common sense” as well as José Esteban Muñoz’s disidentification. Common sense refers to an instinctual, “uncritical and largely unconscious way of perceiving and understanding.” It “is a collective …

The Effects Of Alternate-Line Shading On Visual Search In Grid-Based Graphic Designs, Michael P. Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Objective: The goal of this research was to determine whether alternate-line shading (zebra-striping) of grid-based displays affects the strategy (i.e., “visual flow”) and efficiency of serial search. Background: Grids, matrices, and tables are commonly used to organize information. A number of design techniques and psychological principles are relevant to how viewers’ eyes can be guided through such visual works. One common technique for grids, “zebra-striping,” is intended to guide eyes through the design, or “create visual flow” by alternating shaded and unshaded rows or columns. Method: 13 participants completed a visual serial search task. The target was embedded in a …

The Heart Of The Lower Story: Thesis Exhibition, Cassandra Stagner

Honors Theses

The Heart of the Lower Story: Thesis Exhibition is established around a study-internship in Scotland. The works consist of landscape and architecture photography, as well as hand drawn portraits and charcoal pieces. The style of the work and exhibition is comprised of simple elements such as barn wood framing and work created on OSB board to involve experimentation. “The Heart of the Lower Story” has been exhibited at the Lee Honors College with an opening reception for supporters and friends to attend that also introduced a video compilation of interviews taken while in Scotland. The questions being addressed were: What …

Goldfield Studies, Dawn Roe

Faculty Publications

The dialogue within this essay serves as a response to the series, Goldfield Studies, a work itself prompted by the history and landscape of this eponymous region of Victoria, Australia. The imagery produced takes the form of paired and multiple still photographs and a digital video sequence, displayed in triple-projection. The discussion is framed by the artist’s introduction, which defines the project as a critical consideration of cultural memory in relation to the opposing perspectives of indigenous and colonial settler narratives, pastoral landscape representations, folklore and myth. A collaborative dialogue between an artist and art historian who share common research …

Reimagining The Silver Screen: Contemporary Film Stills, Kyle Demartino

Senior Honors Projects

During the late 19^th century longer rolls of celluloid photographic film, and motion picture cameras were first introduced, which allowed for the capture of rapid sequences of still images at a relatively high speeds. The first films shown to audiences on a larger screen, although rudimentary, caused people to gasp or run from the cinema, as they believed the images on screen were real. As technology increased feature films progressed from only showing a simple static event to creating full stories spanning over various sets and containing multiple characters. With the advent of sound, filmmakers were given another tool …

Film Still From "Isolation", Julia Eldred

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

1200 Miles : Life And Death On The Thai-Burma Border, Jack Picone

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

No abstract provided.

Memory Traces 2012 : Hong Kong, Department Of Visual Studies, Lingnan University

Visual Studies Programme : Students’ Monographs

Memory Traces is a photography book project which comprises a collection of images created by students of Jack Picone during a studio practice class at Lingnan University. The collective body of work is an exploration of a wide array of themes based on each student's own personal interests.

"La Venus Se Fue De Juerga Por Los Barrios Bajos": Nacho López, Mass Culture, And Modernity, Jenifer L. Caneschi

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.