Play, Photography, and Sound in Roy DeCarava’s the sound i saw

This thesis explores the relationship between photography, play, and sound in Roy DeCarava’s photobook the sound i saw. Following the work of Peter Buse, the context for this exploration is the dominant “melancholic paradigm” of photography studies. To move away from this paradigm focused on death, this article returns to the relationship between photography and theatre drawn by Roland Barthes, and goes in the direction of ‘play’, as opposed to death. It identifies three photographic sites: the photographer, the spectator, and the photograph, and argues for the presence of play at each site. By playing with the limits of the scene, the photographer embodies a playful relation to the world. Counterintuitively listening to the photograph, “seeing sound” the spectator advenes into the image as a playground of the senses. Finally, the photograph is rendered sonic through the feedback of overwhelming detail inherent to the medium. The article concludes by adjoining these three sites to...Show moreThis thesis explores the relationship between photography, play, and sound in Roy DeCarava’s photobook the sound i saw. Following the work of Peter Buse, the context for this exploration is the dominant “melancholic paradigm” of photography studies. To move away from this paradigm focused on death, this article returns to the relationship between photography and theatre drawn by Roland Barthes, and goes in the direction of ‘play’, as opposed to death. It identifies three photographic sites: the photographer, the spectator, and the photograph, and argues for the presence of play at each site. By playing with the limits of the scene, the photographer embodies a playful relation to the world. Counterintuitively listening to the photograph, “seeing sound” the spectator advenes into the image as a playground of the senses. Finally, the photograph is rendered sonic through the feedback of overwhelming detail inherent to the medium. The article concludes by adjoining these three sites to see how DeCarava bridges the gap between practical and theoretical understandings of play in photography.Show less

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Play, Photography, and Sound in Roy DeCarava’s the sound i saw