Photography Commons^™

Fossil Morphology, Leah Zhang

Masters Theses

Fossil Morphology is a multi-media art project based on my research on the coal mining area in East Pennsylvania. It consists of a film, a series of photographs, and a sound installation. Together, the three works form a dialog among each other about the ecology and aesthetics of the region’s coal mining landscape and its underground.

For a long time, coal, as an raw material for mass production, has been understood and examined from its economic values and social meanings. The gradual abandoning of this material by our industry therefore leads to the seemingly inevitable decline of the coal mining …

Pod + College Crusade Photo Journaling 2021, Project Open Door

Project Open Door + Onward We Learn

Participating artists: Ashley, Claudia, Daniel, Izenia, Jennifer, Keyleth, Musta'an, and Perla.

Photography is a tool that can help us to “SEE.” What does this mean? If we are not visually impaired, we can, of course, physically see. But how much do we miss seeing? How much do we take for granted unless we take the time to look? With assignments that hope to inspire careful observation, we can use the camera to observe things in our familiar surroundings in quite extraordinary ways. Photography can help us become more observant and help us have a fulfilling visual life. During this time …

Pod + Onward We Learn (College Crusade) Photo Journaling 2021, Project Open Door

Publications + Documents + Videos

Participating artists: Ashley, Claudia, Daniel, Izenia, Jennifer, Keyleth, Musta'an, and Perla.

POD partnered with Onward We Learn (formerly known as College Crusade) to provide unique and engaging virtual summer workshop experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this online workshop, students were given daily photo challenges to create portraits and still life photographs. They found textures, shapes, colors, numbers, and letters through photographic explorations of their familiar surroundings. In doing so, students created an individual photo journal over the week.

Photography is a tool that can help us to “SEE.” What does this mean? If we are not visually impaired, we …

Carretera Nacional, Melba Arellano, Fernando Gallegos, Alejandro Cartagena, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

96 unnumbered pages : chiefly color illustrations, portraits. SUMMARY "Some of the most vivid and exciting memories from my childhood happened along the Acapulco-Zihuatanejo National Highway. This is a book about the people I saw and eventually met on those journeys"--Melba Arellano. Parallel text in Spanish and English. Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. 2021 First PhotoBook Shortlist. Pamphlet stitch. Book is wrapped in paper belly band.

Love And Politics / Alejandro Cartagena, Book Concept ; Photographs : Fototeca De Nuevo León, Conarte, Fondo Archivo General Del Estado De Nuevo León ; Edited By Fernando Gallegos And Alejandro Cartagena ; Text By Ximena Peredo., Alejandro Cartagena, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

6 volumes : chiefly illustrations, portraits"Title from cover. Risograph printed. Vol. I. Our Guide -- Vol. II. The Inauguration -- Vol. III. Music for the Masses -- Vol. IV. The Supervisors -- Vol. V. Rituals of Love -- Vol. VI. For our Children. Parallel texts in English and Spanish. A critical view of the relationship between political and corporate power and society during the ""modernization"" period of the city of Monterrey in the first half of the 20th century. OUR GUIDE is a book of portraits that ridicules the theatricality of politics, Alejandro Cartagena and Fernando Gallegos present a compendium …

West 176 Street

Photography

30 unnumbered pages : all color illustrations, portraits. Title, statement of responsibilty and publisher from band around cover. Edition of 300. "ningun ser humano es ilegal"-- paper band. [No human being is illegal]. A selection of images taken at Groana's home. This apartment is were she grew up and where her parents still live. The publication includes both images from her family album and pictures she has been taking of the place and its inhabitants sinced 2005. The apartment is in the neighborhood of Washington Heights, located in northern Manhattan. Offset printing. Stapled. Born in Brooklyn, Groana Melendez was raised …

El Jardín De Senderos Que Se Bifurcan, Tarrah Krajnak, Kavior Moon, Shawn Bush, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

116 unnumbered pages : illustrations ; 28 cm + 1 booklet (20 unnumbered pages : illustrations ; 21 cm). Title and author statement from slipcase, gold foil stamp (29 cm). Includes booklet: "37: The Missing Pyramid." "Images by Tarrah Krajnak. Text by Tarrah Krajnak. Afterword by Kavior Moon. Edited in collaboration with Tarrah Krajnak & Shawn Bush. Design and Box Production by Shawn Bush."--Colophon. First edition of 200. Special edition (25 numbered, signed copies) is issued in a slipcase, with an added envelope containing a silver gelatin print laid in. Library has copy 12 of the Special edition. Book within …

Pod + College Crusade Photo Journaling 2020, Project Open Door

Project Open Door + Onward We Learn

Participating artists: Jaylyn B., Jeremy R., Karlim T., Kelssy B., Kenneth B., Maria L., Maria-Camila M., Maria R., Sanilda V., Andrea G., Astrid C., Christiana V., Edgar N., Fredy G., Genesis M., Ilanis R., Jeffri P., Larissa P., and Toluwani A.

Photography is a tool that can help us to “SEE.” What does this mean? If we are not visually impaired, we can, of course, physically see. But how much do we miss seeing? How much do we take for granted unless we take the time to look? With assignments that hope to inspire careful observation, we can use the …

Pod + Onward We Learn (College Crusade) Photo Journaling 2020, Project Open Door

Publications + Documents + Videos

Participating artists: Jaylyn B., Jeremy R., Karlim T., Kelssy B., Kenneth B., Maria L., Maria-Camila M., Maria R., Sanilda V., Andrea G., Astrid C., Christiana V., Edgar N., Fredy G., Genesis M., Ilanis R., Jeffri P., Larissa P., and Toluwani A.

POD partnered with Onward We Learn (formerly known as College Crusade) to provide unique and engaging virtual summer workshop experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this online workshop, students were given daily photo challenges to create portraits and still life photographs. They found textures, shapes, colors, numbers, and letters through photographic explorations of their familiar surroundings. In doing so, …

These Inadvertent Marks, Thomas Wilder

Masters Theses

These Inadvertent Marks is a photographic investigation of scuffs, stains, residue, scratches, holes, and blemishes as a complex set of inadvertent marks which possess an inextricable relationship to the human intention to find and make meaning in the world. Excluding marks that are clearly the result of highly substantial accidents, I look to consider those which are largely deemed trivial and peripheral as a means of renewing perception and surrendering to the unconsidered. The photographs included are the result of a process of discovery and close consideration through wandering in my local surroundings: urban streets, private homes, airports, bathrooms, alleys, …

First Sweet Truth, Jessina Lynn Leonard

Masters Theses

First Sweet Truth is a photographic dialogue with mystical texts written by Christian women in the late Middle Ages. These visionary accounts are not only significant historically—many of them are the first known texts to be written by women in the West—but, moreover, provide a foundation for non-anthropocentric knowledge. In our contemporary landscape informed by algorithms and data-driven forms of knowledge, mystical experience inherently defies the logic of our time. Today we largely assume seeing to be a disembodied act. In a constant flow of images, our eyes skim, understand, move on—what the philosopher Laura Marks calls seeing-as-mastering. In contrast, …

Amor Fati, Keavy Handley-Byrne

Masters Theses

I am searching for a way to grieve someone I never knew. At age 26, I was lucky enough to meet the woman who would become my wife. We quickly discovered that there were many coincidences and connections that could be found when we examined our lives a little more closely – our parents shared a wedding anniversary, our fathers each had five siblings, Alice’s parents shared their names with my grandfather and his second wife (Walter and Joan). But what quickly became apparent to me were the links between Alice’s mother and my grandmother. Apart from photographs and memories …

The Knots On The Underside Of The Carpet, Lily Colman

Masters Theses

A woman enters marriage, guided by a rich lineage of strong, lifelong marriages, yet is also caught in a web of misplaced ideals and expectations deferred by culture. She carries the weight of these histories, as well as her own expectations. Throughout history, women have been minimized and shoved into their own separate, domestic “spheres.” Future generations inherit these traumas, which in turn affects how they experience life. When a woman realizes her marriage is not what it should be, that she has been turned into a flat and unfulfilled version of herself and ultimately files for divorce, the weight …

Make Yourself At Home, Han Seok You

Masters Theses

“Make Yourself at Home” is a personal journey of self-documentation to discover a definition of “home” and family, and to reenact the missing scenes from my youth. As a child who grew up in many different places far away from home, I missed out on many family moments and a sense of belonging. As a South Korean passport holder who has lived mostly in North America, my identity is unresolved. I find myself in the balance between Korean and American. With the progression of this project, I try to reconcile my past in order to gain an understanding of my …

Santa Barbara Save Us, Alejandro Cartagena, Special Collections, Fleet Library, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

116 unnumbered pages : all illustrations (some color) ;1 booklet (8 unnumbered pages : 3 illustrations (1 portrait). Cover title. Introduction by Jonathan Blaustein. Limited edition of 50 copies signed by the photographer and accompanied by 2 photographic color prints. "The last chapter of the trilogy that has followed the cultural turmoil that the US has lived in the last 4 years. The third volume continues to paint an uncertain present and future"--Publisher's website, viewed October 14, 2021. Alejandro's pictures in this project, since the beginning, have channeled that fear of fire, the engulfing heat, the insatiable flames, devouring everyone …

While Nothing Lasts, Edward Cushenberry, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

120 unnumbered pages : all color illustrations ; 33 cm. While nothing lasts, is a collection of intimate and sometimes intrusive photographs of my very close friends and family. This project started four years ago at a party, when I made a picture of my friend crying after she told me she wanted to break up with her boyfriend. After that night, I felt compelled to document every moment of my friends and familys livesthe good and the bad. I wanted to do this to better understand how we collectively cope with life, love, heartbreak and death. Since this project …

At No Point In Between, Zora J. Murff, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

100 unnumbered pages : illustrations (some color). Inserted are two small photograph reproductions and one pamphlet First hardcover edition of 165. Design and cover production by Shawn Bush. Printed in Milwaukee, WI by The Fox Co. "At No Point In Between prompts inquiry into the antinomy that exists in recorded violence: how documentation of anti-black violence was used to shame black individuals, but how we have used those same images inversely to interrupt the collective belief of a racial hierarchy. Murff accomplishes this by challenging the photographs use as an objective document; addressing the convergence of the physical and social …

Yanjie / 顏姐: Combing For Ice And Jade, Kurt Tong, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

246 unnumbered pages : color illustrations (some folded). 1st edition. Combing for Ice and Jade is a love note from Kurt Tong to his nanny, who was one of the last remaining self combed women left in China. An early form of Feminism, the comb up ceremony granted women great autonomy at a great cost. Kurt Tong has worked closely with his nanny over a period of nearly 7 years. Having only 8 photographs of herself, the book is an exploration of her extraordinary life. Her story is slowly revealed through the book, combined with Kurts family archive, found photographs …

Were It Not For, Michael Ashkin, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

256 unnumbered pages : chiefly illustrations. "Michael Ashkin works across a range of media--painting, photography, sculpture, video, and text. Uniting these diverse practices is a conceptual focus on the way that notions of space and place, landscape and self, are shaped by wider political and economic forces. "Were it not for" is combining a 670-line text with 218 photographs of the Mojave Desert. This combination creates a powerful sense of unease throughout the document, which is exploring the idea of fear and haunting as an effect of the violent legacies contained within the landscape, and as a function of the …

Se Te Subio El Santo | Are You In A Trance?, Tiona Mcclodden, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

94 unnumbered pages : illustrations, portraits ; 21 cm. Se Te Subio El Santo is a collection of self-portraits taken by the artist directly after she awoke every morning while away on a week-long residency in Iowa City, IA at the Center for Afrofuturist Studies in Spring 2016. This daily practice confronts notions of the artist's interests in rendering a full self implicit of gender, race, sexuality, and spirituality while challenging and collapsing the intersections of each identity as well. Includes an essay by Akwaeke Emezi. Offset printing. Sewn, case binding.

The Afronauts, Cristina De Middel, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

88 unnumbered pages : color illustrations, facsimiles. Title from spine, and page [2] of cover. Publication information from colophon. [3rd] Edition of 1000 copies. First published 2012 ; 2nd edition 2016. Photobook by Cristina De Middel inspired by the short-lived Zambia space program started by school teacher Edward Makuka Nkoloso in 1964. Bound photobook of digital prints, with inserts including a map, artwork, letters, reproductions of vintage photographs and newspaper article. Some of the inserts are single and double gate-fold sheets printed on one side of translucent paper.

Secrets, Iñaki Bonillas, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

269 pages : illustrations. Title from cover. "This book was made on the occasion of the exhibition "Secrets" by Iñaki Bonillas, curated by Eugenia Braniff, at Estancia FEMSA - Casa Luis Barragán, Mexico City, May 5 - July 10, 2016." --Last page. Numbered edition of 500 copies. "This first edition was printed on August 2019 in Mexico City." CONTENTS: Secrets a project by Iñaki Bonillas for Estancia FEMSA -- Casa Luis Barragán -- Table of contents for Anthology of Secrets (With examples selected for illustrative purposes) / Luis Felipe Fabre -- Fragment 51 / Álvaro Enrigue -- Nine doors: a …

Between Gods And Animals : Deconstructing Heteronormative Masculines Pursuit To Sustain Power, Shawn Bush

Masters Theses

Between Gods and Animals is a multi-angle exploration of the Caucasian heteronormative male’s endless pursuit to sustain power and inability to live by their own set of codes. Using the Grecco Roman period as an origin point, this work examines the forces that have historically perpetuated the myth of masculinity. Relating past ideals of maleness to contemporary standards this thesis illuminates patriarchal structures that are systematizing masculinity while providing a space to normalize a gamut of masculines. The visual works included act as an introspective approach in accepting the complacency of my existence as a man who has operated within …

Pretend Power, Rosemary Engstrom

Masters Theses

This is an anti-thesis about being a tender and tuff queer femme bitch with mental illness trying to exist in this shitty world by creating worlds of their own. With bright colors, video performance, dress up, collage, and a lot of feelings, I turn power structures on their upside. They become a game of pretend where queers run the show. It’s ok to be sick. It’s ok to be vulnerable. It’s ok to be queer. You’re not alone.

Pine, Eirik Johnson, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations + vinyl record (33 1/3 RPM). "Side A. Bigfoot / Whiting Tennis -- Bird of paradise / Dede -- Recuerdos / Elia -- All the world is green / Eirik Johnson -- Side B. Zoo / NEWAXEYES -- First Thought / Sassy Black -- Love-Lies-Bleeding / Tenderfoot. Over the last few years photographer Eirik Johnson has scouted trees of all environs, looking for human traces upon them, and musing on the (often) adolescent emotions and explorations that lead to poignant sentiments recorded within a living surface. Johnson envisioned and realized a sonic set of …

Naturally Occurring Form, Margaret Kristensen

Masters Theses

I am trying to find art in my body, attempting to create images that personalize and desexualize the nude. Between the body of images that we have access to via social media and the images we have seen of female nudes, emphasis is put on finding the form to be within western society’s acceptable range of beautiful; so rarely do we find organic figures existing in the photographic environment.

Having been taught how to photograph the body by looking at images of women taken by men, I don’t see myself. The photographs by Edward Weston and Irving Penn look, gaze, …

Buraindo Dēto / ブラインドデート (Blind Date), Lieko Shiga, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

100 unnumbered pages : all illustrations. Japanese bound softcover housed in a printed special box. Title, publication information and all text from the enclosure box. "It was the summer of 2009 in Bangkok, Thailand, that Shiga photographed couples on motorbikes. In this city Shiga exchanged glances with hundreds and thousands of people on the back seat of motorbikes. The camera seemed to be the ideal tool for getting closer to that strange feeling of receiving glances without physically connecting with them. She continued for a week and managed to photograph around 100 couples. Continuing to exchange glances with unknown strangers …

Quieto Pelo : Tumaco : Área Rural Y Urbana, Liliana Angulo Cortés, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

[Colombia] : Universidad Nacional de Colombia, [2017]. Collection of 4 postcard booklets with 10 postcards each, printed in glossy paper and folded accordion style (16 x 100 cm unfolded). In Spanish.

Once There Was There Wasn't, Svetlana Bailey

Masters Theses

Objects, places and events that occur in separate times and places can coexist psychologically. My work supposes that this coexistence can be reconciled with photographs, which, although normally fixed to particular times, locationsand stories, are nevertheless able to travel, in boxes, or as mind images on overlapping currents.

I return to places of imaginative influence in my life: to my grandmother's house in the Russian countryside where I spent my summers as a child, and to my parents' home in Germany. Through this journey of return, I am transported in time, as if opening a time capsule. Here I discover …

Where We've Been ; Where We Are Going ; Why?, Dan Boardman, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Photography

2 volumes in one ([206] unnumbered pages) : illustrations (some color), color portraits . "Conveyor Editions, in collaboration with Houseboat Press, is pleased to present Where We've Been, Where We're Going, Why? by Dan Boardman and Aspen Mays. This multi-part publication is a collection of personal and public archives--family snapshots, candid photographs of the Challenger crew, astronomy plates of Halley's Comet, and screenshots of video from the Teacher in Space project Lost Lessons. Boardman and Mays use the photographic archive as a device to draw connections between seemingly disparate events--the return of Halley's Comet, the rite of passage of the …