Dealing with one’s mental health after experiencing physical trauma is brave but sharing one’s own experience with a broader public opens up an important conversation about trauma and mental health...Show moreDealing with one’s mental health after experiencing physical trauma is brave but sharing one’s own experience with a broader public opens up an important conversation about trauma and mental health. Contemporary emerging photographers deal with their trauma through self-portrait photography, which has a therapeutic function that is self-initiated but also opens up a bigger conversation. By showing visible and invisible traces of their traumatic experiences by taking self-portraits, these photographers deal with their personal traumas via self-reflection. This thesis uses visual analysis to analyse two main case studies and their peers to see how self-portrait photography can be used to reflect on mental trauma after experiencing physical trauma. The aim is to see how self-portrait photography specifically can be used to reflect the mental trauma that is left after having suffered from physical trauma that was inflicted onto the body.Show less
This thesis explores the application of corporeally bereft urban landscapes in the medium of photography. In my case study, I examine Mauricio Lima's photographs as he retraces Eugéne Atget's steps...Show moreThis thesis explores the application of corporeally bereft urban landscapes in the medium of photography. In my case study, I examine Mauricio Lima's photographs as he retraces Eugéne Atget's steps in Paris during the height of the COVID pandemic of 2020. I aim to provide insights into the multiple roles and meanings that “empty places” can take on and connote. To elucidate, I engage with concepts such as the decontextualized place, Benjamin's notion of the Optical Unconscious, rephotography, and appropriation. Additionally, I question the use, shifts, and possible expanded meaning gained through the combination of images with text.Show less
The monumental and breathtaking grand vistas seen in technologically advanced sublime landscape photography aiming to objectively warn about the fragile state of the earth, raise the question of...Show moreThe monumental and breathtaking grand vistas seen in technologically advanced sublime landscape photography aiming to objectively warn about the fragile state of the earth, raise the question of whether landscape photography could offer a less heroic, yet ethically engaging counter language that facilitates a responsive involvement with our environment. The research introduces the concept of a non-representative “minor landscape photography” as a change-seeking approach to camera technology that regains the ideological erasure of subjective technological vision. In that sense, minor landscape photography rejects the humanist ideology of objective vision that conceptually excludes the observer from the field of vision. Assisted by an elaborate case study with photographers that are critically involved with landscape representation the research investigates three counter perspectives to “unsee” the authoritative, all-seeing eye of disembodied vision. In a performative process of embodied unseeing, the perspectives operate on reduced visibility with photographs that consciously act as mediating surfaces between the observer and the world. Ultimately, in favour of a non-oppositional, multi-perspectival and transformative liaison with contemporary technology and its subject matter, the research emphasises the ethical promise of minor landscape photography to inform a “world that is yet to be.” In times of environmental concern, the ultimate rejection of technology’s repressive magic and its static “view from nowhere” invite camera technology to assist in the formation of a liberating, life-informing and eco-conscious landscape photography that empowers accountable “views from somewhere” to evolve.Show less
Due to its severe and incomprehensible nature, trauma remains problematic in terms of representation. How does one represent the unrepresentable? This tricky territory of trauma and representation...Show moreDue to its severe and incomprehensible nature, trauma remains problematic in terms of representation. How does one represent the unrepresentable? This tricky territory of trauma and representation will be explored by this thesis within the context of the medium of photography by focussing on aftermath landscape photography. This thesis intends to answer the question: How does the landscape within aftermath photography position itself in relation to the historical traumatic atrocities it aspires to capture? A comparative theoretical analysis of two aftermath landscape photographs by Chloe Dewe Mathews, from the aftermath photography project Shot at Dawn (2014), guide the chapters which address the concept of place, the presence of absence and the concept of time. Three interrelated overarching understandings of the landscape’s position, in relation to the trauma the aftermath photographs aspire to capture, have emerged through the analysis. These can be summarized as landscape as a keepsake box, landscape as contradiction, and landscape as perception.Show less
This thesis researches a number of key conceptualisations of photography that lead the photographic discourse. One of its leading threads runs via two domains which supposedly stand in opposition...Show moreThis thesis researches a number of key conceptualisations of photography that lead the photographic discourse. One of its leading threads runs via two domains which supposedly stand in opposition to one another: the aesthetic domain of the photograph has hampered its socio-political manifestation. A photograph identified as a work of art is at disadvantage of finding recognition for its social or political value since quality is measured first and foremost by means of aesthetic parameters. In Ariella Azoulay's theoretical work on photography lies a means of bridging photography’s aesthetic dimension to its socio-political nature. Using the concept of sensus communis as a tool for understanding Azoulay's conceptions, this thesis looks into the transitioning understanding of photography’s socio-political nature in relation to its aesthetic nature that evolved during the historical course of photographic theory.Show less
