In this thesis I question the role of photographs in relation to Dutch national identity, regarding traditional costumes specifically. I set forth how sentiments of Dutch (national) identity can be...Show moreIn this thesis I question the role of photographs in relation to Dutch national identity, regarding traditional costumes specifically. I set forth how sentiments of Dutch (national) identity can be expressed, questioned, challenged or reinforced through photography. In doing so, I lay bare contrasts between national and local cultural expressions, between othering and elevating people, between feelings of distance and unification, between past and present. The case studies on which I build this research concern two photo series of inhabitants of Marken – a former Dutch island, now a peninsula – photographed by Cas Oorthuys and Jimmy Nelson. In this research the focal point is the argument that a Dutch national identity is reinforced through their photographs of people in Marken traditional costumes. This reinforcement is achieved through constructing identities and by invoking symbolic and indexical relations of nostalgia, idealization, pride, ‘Dutchness’ and heritage.Show less
This is a comparative research between Dutch 17th century food still life paintings and contemporary food photography in order to analyze how our perception of food has changed over time. The...Show moreThis is a comparative research between Dutch 17th century food still life paintings and contemporary food photography in order to analyze how our perception of food has changed over time. The paintings and photographs are analyzed from both an art historical and from a social point of view, because social developments are essential to provide a full understanding of the changes in the depiction of food in both painting and photography.Show less
In the last two to three decades, throughout the world, urban and architectural spaces have been losing their identities over cities, driven mainly by commercial and economic interests....Show moreIn the last two to three decades, throughout the world, urban and architectural spaces have been losing their identities over cities, driven mainly by commercial and economic interests. Nevertheless, a number of artists have been escaping from their own traditional sphere of activity and exploring questions about space, the main tool of architects. These artists have been creating innovative hybrid works of art-and-architecture that highlight the singularity of places. Furthermore, they have also been focusing on the spectator’s bodily experiences using a phenomenological approach on their artworks. Recognizing these issues, this research opens discussions on how the adoption of phenomenological aspects in the creative process of art-and-architecture can contribute to an embodied experience through the artist Olafur Eliasson’s constructed work Fjordenhus (2018), in Vejle, Denmark, in partnership with the architect Sebastian Behmann. The main argument is that works embedded in a phenomenological bias can serve as a tool for resuscitation and vitality of architectural spaces in a relationship between architecture, space, and body. This study aims to contribute to the recent debates, concerning the tenuous limit of the interdisciplinary fields of visual art and architecture, with the participation of an artist in the conceptual process of an architectural project.Show less
The ancient Egyptian mummies have been extensively portrayed throughout history, since the early inceptions of photography and cinema, and remain popular in visual culture. Certain ways of...Show moreThe ancient Egyptian mummies have been extensively portrayed throughout history, since the early inceptions of photography and cinema, and remain popular in visual culture. Certain ways of portraying them have been repeatedly followed like traditions, which resulted in establishing stereotypes. In this thesis, I investigate how some of these recurring portrayals dehumanise the ancient Egyptians. For this purpose, I have compiled an archive of photographs and films, and analysed their stereotypical portrayal patterns. In doing so, I have identified two traditions; the portrayal of mummies in non-fictional photographs as artefacts (artefication), and their portrayal in fictional films as monsters (monstrification). In two visual essays accompanying this thesis, I demonstrate how these traditions systematically deny the portrayed mummies essentially and uniquely human qualities, resulting in their dehumanisation. Further, I discuss their spectacularisation — inherent in their artefication and monstrification— and the mode of spectatorship evoked by the mummified body as a spectacle. The thesis thus aims to offer a critique on dehumanising portrayals of the ancient Egyptians, shedding light on the repercussions of the encounter with such images.Show less
Since the late 1950s, analog technology began to be replaced by digital technology, leading to the start of the digital age. Although we are presently living in the digital age and most of our...Show moreSince the late 1950s, analog technology began to be replaced by digital technology, leading to the start of the digital age. Although we are presently living in the digital age and most of our forms of technology and communication are correspondingly digital, there has been a conspicuous proliferation and return to analog technologies in the arts and culture. With an increasing fetishization of retro and analog, photographers raised during the digital age still make use of analog photography. This thesis investigates this fetishization by examining the potentials of instant and film photography that attract digital photographers and how they approach them. The aesthetics of nostalgia and analog are construed to assess how they can be applied to the digital and to consider how they are marketed. Materiality as a potential of instant photography is subsequently considered along with how it has been used by female artists as a self-empowering tool. Further, the potential of cinematic gaze in film photography and how it applies the quirky sensibility is considered, which leads to the study of how the cinematic gaze is equally used to redefine how the female body is viewed. Thus, this thesis seeks to comprehend several potentials of analog photography such as nostalgic value, materiality and cinematic use and how they have been appropriated by society, the market and artists.Show less
This thesis examines the role of the environment in the artworks of Dan Graham and Olafur Eliasson in Inhotim Institute of Contemporary Art and Botanical Gardens, in Brazil. This is done from the...Show moreThis thesis examines the role of the environment in the artworks of Dan Graham and Olafur Eliasson in Inhotim Institute of Contemporary Art and Botanical Gardens, in Brazil. This is done from the perspective of Environmental Aesthetics, which is the theoretical frame that allows the consideration of the environment not only as a subject matter for contemporary art. Rather, the important contributions of philosopher Arnold Berleant and Allen Carlson in the field, acknowledge our understanding and engagement with the environment as intrinsic elements of the aesthetic experience. Therefore, this thesis looks not only to the materiality of Dan Graham’s Bisected triangle, Interior curve (2002), and Olafur Eliasson’s Viewing Machine (2001-2003). It also sees the constitution of the relationship between the viewer, the artworks and the environment in Inhotim Institute as constituent parts of how we perceive them. By emphasizing the active relationality in/with the environment, the scope of this research is extended beyond the traditional foundations of aesthetics as, for instance, the idea of the contemplation of a landscape, the subjectivity of the viewer, and the pleasure associated with beauty. Finally, this thesis shows that when perceiving natural environments in relation to art we are invited to enter a space in which our perception is always in movement between our cultural beliefs, the environmental conditions that affect us and the artwork. In engaging in/with the environment in the aesthetic experience, Dan Graham and Olafur Eliasson offer us ways of disrupting our accustomed view, enlarging our experience in the world, and bringing art closer to the everyday life.Show less
This thesis takes on an inter-disciplinary approach to examine the extent to which the state of Kenya used the genre of portrait photography to create a sense of nationhood after independence. I...Show moreThis thesis takes on an inter-disciplinary approach to examine the extent to which the state of Kenya used the genre of portrait photography to create a sense of nationhood after independence. I take on the theory of nation and nationalism as a framework to discuss and visually analyse the portraits of Kenya's four president and citizens portrait in the form of identity photography. By first establishing how modern-state Kenya came into being, the discussion set a premise to the motivation behind the study. The first chapter analyses the standardised official presidential state portraits, their materiality, physicality and their symbolism to communicate a change of leadership in Kenya. The second chapter investigates the 'self-fashioned' portraits of the presidents which take on different aesthetics and visual codes creating different meanings and therefore are interpreted using other references. The last chapter is a shift from 'honorific' portraiture of the presidents to the 'repressive' class of the sitters- the citizens. This chapter investigates citizen's portraits used in the colonial times to control movements of labourers and surveillance and how it is now used as a form of document of National Identification. This thesis argues that all the mentioned kinds of portraiture contributed to disseminating the idea of nationhood.Show less
The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate in how and why encyclopedic projects by archival based photographers, challenge and counter the figure of the digital database. The yearning for...Show moreThe main purpose of this thesis is to investigate in how and why encyclopedic projects by archival based photographers, challenge and counter the figure of the digital database. The yearning for collecting or ‘archive fever’ (as defined by Jacques Derrida) is still found in some contemporary art projects. Consequently, in a world where more and more objects, documents and photographs are stored digitally, the question remains why some photographers resort to the archive as their working method and continue to display their works through analogue techniques such as the book and the installation. In order to understand the working method these artists adopt, this thesis shares them under the position of ‘the-photographer-as-archivist’. This thesis considers two case studies, firstly Parallel Encyclopedia #1 (2007) by Batia Suter (1967) and secondly The Universal Photographer (2018) by Anne Geene (1983) and Arjan de Nooy (1965). Their projects are assessed visually as well as theoretically, using the method of visual research as proposed by Gillian Rose. This method bases itself on the three modalities of technology, composition and social elements that surround visual imagery. The research has shown that both of the explored works, contain anti-database characteristics such as physicality, materiality and narrativity as their most prominent features. This means that in terms of discourse they comment on the structure, active accumulation, the usage and functioning of the digital database.Show less
