Master thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (MSc)
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An anthropological research into the human-to-car relationship, specifically considering those who acknowledge themselves as “car enthusiastic” beyond its functions of mobility, based in and around...Show moreAn anthropological research into the human-to-car relationship, specifically considering those who acknowledge themselves as “car enthusiastic” beyond its functions of mobility, based in and around Stuttgart, Germany. The capital of Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart is the birthplace of the internal combustion engine [ICE] automobile as we recognise it today. Revolutionary at its point in time, the ubiquity of the ICE automobile in modern society is now one of the world’s leading causes of pollution. As the EU pushes the industry to move away from the familiar, this research zooms into those whose object of passion is being forced to transform. Four months of multi-sited fieldwork, engaging predominantly with methods of photography during drive-along interviews and participant observation, gave rise to a discussion of the human-car relationship through the prevalent conceptual lenses of ‘value’ and ‘play’. A photobook, as the multimodal counterpart of this ethnographic project, elaborates on the diversity and ambiguity of the human-car experience. Drawing on an implicit argument that newer technologies do not immediately make older ones redundant, the book format invites the reader to reflect on their own relationship with the (ICE) automobile through a compilation of photos from the field placed in montage, alongside anecdotes and questions.Show less
This thesis addresses the gap in post-truth war literature by examining victim representation in post-truth wars, focusing on how photography is used to weaponize victims to support a narrative...Show moreThis thesis addresses the gap in post-truth war literature by examining victim representation in post-truth wars, focusing on how photography is used to weaponize victims to support a narrative that can be either helpful or damaging to their cause. It analyzes Russian propaganda supporting Assad’s regime surrounding the Syrian chemical attacks (2013, 2017, 2018). The analysis draws from the field of victimology and critiques of violent photography. Findings reveal photography's dual role in hybrid conflicts: manipulating evidence and empowering audiences to challenge narratives and advocate for justice. This is crucial in the context of increasing hybrid conflicts and citizen-journalism.Show less
There is a pressing need for new articulation and tools to make the cloud more understandable. Data center visualization has become increasingly relevant for this purpose. The goal of this paper is...Show moreThere is a pressing need for new articulation and tools to make the cloud more understandable. Data center visualization has become increasingly relevant for this purpose. The goal of this paper is to investigate what photography can mean medium-wise by using it to represent the cloud through photographing data centers. The medium of photography for representing the cloud has not yet been researched. Central to this research is the analysis of the photography of Acid Clouds that photographs datacenter exteriors as a means to map the cloud. By the way in which photography is discursively embedded as both informative and desensitizing, photography of data centers as a form of visualizing the cloud can easily, instead of offering visibility, make the cloud more distractive but omnipresent, as well as reinforce ideas of security and complicity. This paper develops two concepts, "concealment" and "stability," that can be used by researchers and artists who want to work with the interplay between the medium of photography, cloud infrastructure, and the cloud.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This written and visual research project sets out to consider how the notion of opacity marks photographs of environmental despoliation. It argues that opacity can be a critically potent framework...Show moreThis written and visual research project sets out to consider how the notion of opacity marks photographs of environmental despoliation. It argues that opacity can be a critically potent framework in photographic practices that engage with the ecological crisis by means of its construction of more affective modes of communicating a phenomenon that is itself often marked by incomprehensibility. In doing so, it conducts a comparative visual analysis of two photographic series: Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky and Oil and Moss by Igor Tereshkov. It concludes that Burtynsky’s series constructs an awesome visuality that pursues a revelatory approach but, in actuality, ends up reasserting a set of beliefs that are already widely known, consequently not inciting new, critical modes of contemplating the ecological crisis. Tereshkov’s work, on the other hand, works to recombine the aesthetic with the critical; focusing on the interactions between the images’ visuality and their tactility, this thesis argues that Oil and Moss’ critical potency is established by means of its destabilising, disruptive aesthetics of the opaque. The ecological crisis is also a crisis of imagination: as humans, we struggle to grasp and make sense of the scale and severity of the devastation that appears to be creeping closer and closer. As such, we are in need of new, innovative modes of imagining our physical environments and how we relate to them. Photography, in its simultaneous ability to remember the past, to contemplate the future, and to imagine alternative iterations of the present, is one itinerary through which that may be achieved.Show less
This thesis analyses the photographic series Flesh Love (2011-) by Japanese artist Haruhiko Kawaguchi (川口晴彦) as a case study that allows the audience to involuntary confront or imagine death...Show moreThis thesis analyses the photographic series Flesh Love (2011-) by Japanese artist Haruhiko Kawaguchi (川口晴彦) as a case study that allows the audience to involuntary confront or imagine death without actually including the death of the subjects photographed in the artwork. The photographed imagery is characterised by the suffocation of people in the airless bag. By analysing the case, the thesis aims to illustrate strategies to make the audience imagine death without the existence of death. The main argument of this thesis is that although the photographic series Flesh Love does not include the actual death of subjects, it successfully creates the capacity to allow the viewers to imagine death. In order to argue this point, this thesis looks at the elements that contribute to making the audience confront death through three approaches: (1) photographic images, (2) production process and the medium of photography and (3) affective capacity of the audience.Show less
It is only through the acknowledgement of a multitude of truths and perceptions that the myths that war perpetuates, and from which it has stemmed, can be deconstructed. This deconstruction is...Show moreIt is only through the acknowledgement of a multitude of truths and perceptions that the myths that war perpetuates, and from which it has stemmed, can be deconstructed. This deconstruction is essential to reach the goals of transitional justice (TJ), the peace-building effort implemented by a state that has suffered human rights abuses owing to authoritarianism and war during its transition to democracy or after the signing of a Peace Agreement. Photographs that captured the times preceding such transition, might offer a testimony to the violence from which the state seeks to heal through TJ’s mechanisms. These mechanisms are aimed at repairing the profound damages that the country has suffered at legal, political, economic and societal levels (Díaz, 2018, 3-5). These images might offer fragments of evidence that could be adopted to hold perpetrators accountable and facilitate the construction of collective memory of the past. This thesis argues that when photography offers a representation of the conflict capturing its complexity and nuances, it might foment the understanding of its seeds and the nurturing of socio-political narratives to promote its non-recurrence. In this way, photography might contribute to TJ’s peacebuilding goal. By 2018, over 8 million people had officially been registered as victims of the Colombian conflict, which started in 1964 and is Latin America's longest war. Despite the signing of a Peace Agreement with the FARC in 2016 and the ambition to build peace in Colombia, this number is increasing through new waves of violence (Navarro, 2019, 290). Considering the country’s historical and contemporary context, this thesis aims to explore how Colombia's war photographers reflected and contributed to its transitional justice efforts. It will focus on the significant photographic works of Jesús Abad Colorado, Federico Ríos, and Stephen Ferry, produced between the 1990s and the post-2016 period. This research is inspired by two beliefs. First, considering Colombia’s forthcoming presidential elections and its candidates’ need for fomenting an effective peace process to end its violence, it is contemporarily relevant to understand the Colombian conflict (Sardiña, 2022). Second, war photography is not a mere objective reflection of conflict, but it is rather a mirror of the perceptions of image-makers on it. Consequently, their subjectivity is worth being researched as it crucially affects how conflicts are represented, remembered, and perhaps even resolved. 4 Chapter 1 reviews literature debating the connection between TJ, photography, conflict, and peace. Chapter 2 contextualises the Colombian conflict from the 1990s and the 2016 Peace Agreement (2.1 and 2.2), introduces the photographers that have documented it (2.3) and presents the qualitative methodology, i.e iconological analysis and interviews, used to analyse their works (2.4). The images used derive from the exhibition “El Testigo” (2020) by Jesús Abad Colorado, the book "Verde" (2021) by Federico Ríos and the book and exhibition "Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict" by Stephen Ferry (2012). Chapter 3 analyzes the images of the photographers, which are organized around the themes of violence (3.1), conflict's complexity (3.2) and armed actors (3.3). The conclusion of the thesis reflects on photography's potential as a tool for TJ.Show less
This thesis focuses on the contemporary queer photography of the artists Zanele Muholi, Momo Okabe, and Zach Blas. More specifically, it examines the role of different theories on gender, queerness...Show moreThis thesis focuses on the contemporary queer photography of the artists Zanele Muholi, Momo Okabe, and Zach Blas. More specifically, it examines the role of different theories on gender, queerness, and photography in connection to queer time and space, haptics, affect, and queer opacity. These aesthetic elements are treated as potentially subversive in relation to Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the society of control. The frameworks of both queer and photography theories are employed to analyze the photographs’ formal and political aspects in order to explore their subversive possibilities. My readings and analysis of the photographs suggest that each of these artists deploys aesthetic features as queer tactics to resist the society of control. Additionally, based on the analysis of my own photographic series, Showering with Glasses (2018), I provide an artist’s perspective on possible methods to approach queer aesthetics and the ways in which they might be harnessed as queer tactics. By specifically addressing contemporary queer photography, my hope is to provide insight into what this genre is capable of achieving in the real world.Show less
Aiming to develop an ecofeminist lens of lens-based art, this thesis analyses how the choice of a specific medium enhances the communication of concepts relating to the relationship between humans,...Show moreAiming to develop an ecofeminist lens of lens-based art, this thesis analyses how the choice of a specific medium enhances the communication of concepts relating to the relationship between humans, or women specifically, and nature. The implications of presenting the female body in nature are discussed through an amalgamation of (eco-)feminist theory and three established topics within media studies: representation, the moving image in the museum, and the affective turn. From representation in photography to affect in video art installation, the growing possibilities of lens-based art are argued to work towards more complex and critical artistic explorations of the relationship between the female body and nature.Show less
This thesis aims to examine the conventions governing both photojournalism and art with regard to war photography. More specifically, how are conventions in representations of war in...Show moreThis thesis aims to examine the conventions governing both photojournalism and art with regard to war photography. More specifically, how are conventions in representations of war in photojournalism interrogated by artists and what conventions in turn govern artistic approaches to war photography? The relationship between art and war photography will be examined in relation to three artworks, which present a complementary approach towards the discussed issues.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 reveals a reflection on trauma in a personal photographic project and focuses on the relationship between photography and memory, and photography and trauma. It aims to answer the...Show moreThis thesis reveals a reflection on trauma in a personal photographic project and focuses on the relationship between photography and memory, and photography and trauma. It aims to answer the question how a visual project created in the format of a reconstructed family photo album can provide insights into issues addressed in theoretical debates on those relationships.Show less
The thesis looks at how the pre-famine conditions in the Yemen civil war are being portraied through photography in late 2018, early 2019 and, at its core, discusses the lack of systematic,...Show moreThe thesis looks at how the pre-famine conditions in the Yemen civil war are being portraied through photography in late 2018, early 2019 and, at its core, discusses the lack of systematic, institutionalised ethic regulations in humanitarian photography and its impact on the future of understanding humanitarian tragedies. It explores three different ways of photographic representation that all aim for charity as main purpose: case oriented, illustrative human rights photography (Doctors Without Borders), dehumanising and objectifying tendencies of mass media photography spectacles (New York Times) and the inbetween, using sequential narratives to generate context (United Nations Crisis Relief/UNOCHA). The following discussion explores the use of photography as visual spectacle rather than portraying human beings in a context that grounds them as human beings. This bases in the recent discourses of visual global politics (Bleiker, Hutchinson, Chouliaraki, Robinson, Pruce et al.). At last, it expands the discussion towards modern means of visual media (sequential photography, video, virtual reality, augmented reality, 4d)and explores the vast possibilities of integrating alternative media formats in humanitarian causes as well as its possible dangers that 'do-good' humanism can cause for humanitarian organisations in the long run.Show less
This thesis focuses on vernacular photographs that have been altered by artists stitching various forms of embroidery directly into the photographic paper, creating an interplay of thread, paper,...Show moreThis thesis focuses on vernacular photographs that have been altered by artists stitching various forms of embroidery directly into the photographic paper, creating an interplay of thread, paper, and image. The combination of these opposing traits into a single work subverts the viewer’s assumptions about both mediums, and constitutes a specific spectator experience. I utilise theories from film, photography, painting, and digital media that deal with materiality and embodiment in order to examine what is at work in an embodied spectator experience with specific works from four artists using varied approaches. My hope is to provide insight into potential avenues and outcomes for embodiment with both these objects in particular and embroidered photographs more broadly.Show less
