The development of fashion photography, just like its subject itself, was in the past and will be affected by trends in the future. The techniques and influences that emerged in the field since the...Show moreThe development of fashion photography, just like its subject itself, was in the past and will be affected by trends in the future. The techniques and influences that emerged in the field since the late 1980s and 1990s have marked a paradigm shift from idealized to flexible conventions shaping the status quo of what constitutes a contemporary fashion (ad) photograph. The developments are reflected in modern fashion (ad) photographers’ works such as by Philip DiCorcia or Juergen Teller. The latter is considered a trending fashion photography pioneer. Although it is impossible to typify contemporary advertising photography’s expression, this paper illustrates one of its multi-approaches by investigating Juergen Teller’s (aesthetic) strategy in the advert campaign series Resort 2020 for Miu Miu in light of the concept of hybridity, which reflects the tendency of post-modernist photography. The notion of hybridity is characterized by dualism. The ad contains a multiplicity of hybrid elements revealed by using the methods of interdisciplinary research approach, combining literature review from various disciplines and visual analysis: Miu Miu Resort reflects not only a hybrid fusion of the luxury (the Miu Miu collection) and the banal (the setting or the models’ posing) but also plays on the concept of the grotesque which is in itself hybrid and is exemplified in the photographic series mainly by pairing incongruent categories such as animal and handbag. The general ambiguity in Resort is reflected in ‘conflicting’ compositions intriguing viewers and stimulate their curiosity for luxury products’ display, proved by findings of other scholars’ research on grotesque imagery’s persuasiveness. Teller’s imagery lacks cohesiveness and is not classifiable in many respects, as underlined by his neither amateurish, documentary, or filmic photography style nor in terms of gaze and gender-specific representations of the models. The artist’s work is unlike traditional fashion ad photography, which provides an exaggerated and decorative aura. Teller maintains the Resort campaign’s focus on the Miu Miu commodities by presenting the ordinary as ordinary. The anti-spectacular approach in Juergen Teller’s photographs alludes to the aesthetic concept Wabi-Sabi incorporating intentionally cropped body-parts or sunlight overexposure, rendering albeit the impression of naturalness, but the awareness of an artificial construction remains.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis investigates the art movement Arte Povera through the lens of the Grotesque as an approach to openness. The Arte Povera movement is scrutinized first by a close-reading of the texts and...Show moreThis thesis investigates the art movement Arte Povera through the lens of the Grotesque as an approach to openness. The Arte Povera movement is scrutinized first by a close-reading of the texts and exhibitions by art critic and founding father of the movement Germano Celant, after which the thesis turns to the Grotesque as analytical tool to understand Arte Povera’s inherent contradictions as a form of social anarchy. The Grotesque is proposed as a way to openness, a notion taken from Umberto Eco’s study Opera Aperta. As such, this thesis presents new readings of Arte Povera; of the artworks and actions as well as the critical and curatorial endeavors of Celant that have informed these.Show less
This research explores the conflict that emerges when applying registration practices into performance art. As the ephemerality of performance art is perceived as essential for this art genre,...Show moreThis research explores the conflict that emerges when applying registration practices into performance art. As the ephemerality of performance art is perceived as essential for this art genre, professionals (and sometimes artists) are not always in favor of its total disappearance. Documentation processes have the purpose of partially archiving the memory of these artworks, however, the forms of producing this type of information are not standardized because of the various forms that this art manifestation can have. Some of the strategies museums have been applying were explored during this research to enable enquiring about their compatibility with the nature of performance art. While documentation processes preserve traces of performances’ poetic, the form of perceiving and collecting this artwork as manifestations should not be attached to temporality, but as concepts that can be reinterpreted and have several versions throughout time.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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At the beginning of the early twentieth century, various photographic societies were established such as the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring in England and de Nederlandse Club voor FotoKunst in the...Show moreAt the beginning of the early twentieth century, various photographic societies were established such as the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring in England and de Nederlandse Club voor FotoKunst in the Netherlands, who profiled themselves as artists and promoted photography as a fine art. It is often argued that they solely produced images to evoke emotions or atmosphere, and that they exclusively looked back at painting styles to reach for the ultimate goal of including photography as a fine art. Moreover, the photographs are mainly described on the basis of art historical categories, techniques, or the biographies of the photographers. I argue that these perspectives neglect the crucial fact that the photographs are photographs, and that new perspectives are needed. Therefore, this research will take a more theoretical approach, by focussing on early Dutch photography from 1913-1927, the medium of photography, and the photo-theoretical concepts of light, straight and composed photography, and time. In this research, the focus will specifically be on two seemingly different photographs: a photograph which looks like a seventeenth-century genre painting by Richard Polak and a cameraless photogram by Henri Berssenbrugge. In this analysis, the attention will be aimed on the fact that these photographs are photographs, by moving to the heart of the medium, and eventually highlighting that within this core, the boundaries are blurred. By combining the earliest theories of photography, with more modern and contemporary arguments considering the medium, new perspectives on the two photographs will be provided, which gives revived attention to the neglected or forgotten early Dutch photography. By taking a different perspective, it is shown that the photographs are more than the reproduction of paintings, or more than just another painterly technique for creating figurative and abstract painting.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
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
This thesis investigates through terminological and historical research violence metaphors used in photography language, such as 'the camera as the gun' and 'the photographer as the hunter.'
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
open access
Abstract The German exhibition documenta is inarguably one of the most well-known perennial exhibitions worldwide and takes part every four to five years in Kassel (Germany). The topic discussed in...Show moreAbstract The German exhibition documenta is inarguably one of the most well-known perennial exhibitions worldwide and takes part every four to five years in Kassel (Germany). The topic discussed in this MA thesis, is the 14th edition of documenta and its partial re-location to Athens (Greece) in 2017. This thesis is a critical examination of stereotypical assumptions about Greece’s past that were included in the discourse of the exhibition, and manifested through the public program Exercises of Freedom and the artwork The Parthenon of Books by Marta Minujín. Additionally, these case studies were analyzed based on their common participatory factor using theories of spectatorship by Claire Bishop and Jacques Rancière. This research demonstrates that the documenta14, in the cases of these artworks, conceptualized greek past through the dominant Eurocentric framework.Show less
This thesis examines the visual language of the 'Mouvement National de Liberation de l’Azawad' and how Azawad aims to visually legitimize itself as a nation. Its multi-ethnic demographics show how...Show moreThis thesis examines the visual language of the 'Mouvement National de Liberation de l’Azawad' and how Azawad aims to visually legitimize itself as a nation. Its multi-ethnic demographics show how a public can assume its own agency through visual works created in a group setting. While the interstice is determined to be a space where communication outside of the norm can take place, the use of ‘banal nationalism’ as described by Michael Billig shows that, if anything, the location of this interstice is difficult to determine. The group agency does not translate to the presentation of the works outside of the region as is shown in the work Jonas Staal presented in Utrecht at Basis Aktuele Kunst in 2012. Instead, the works have been re-appropriated to fit within Staal’s concept of a ‘stateless state’. Bourriaud’s theory on relational aesthetics along with Ernesto Laclau’s description of emancipatory dimensions allow for a discussion on the public’s involvement in the creation of the ‘self’ in relation to the ‘other’. Michael Billig’s concepts on nationalism create an interdisciplinary approach in this thesis and show that this legitimization is partly achieved through the use of the language of banal nationalism.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
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis examines what insights the photography series Blue Sky Days (2012-) by Tomas Van Houtryve provides into concepts as vision, subjectivity and representation, which means that the series...Show moreThis thesis examines what insights the photography series Blue Sky Days (2012-) by Tomas Van Houtryve provides into concepts as vision, subjectivity and representation, which means that the series functions as a case study, a common thread. The drone as imaging technology challenges the traditional relation between image and vision. The remarkable visuality of the series, the vertical perspective, distorts our sense of spatial and temporal orientation. It differs from the visuality that long dominated our vision, the paradigm of the linear perspective. I argue that drone vision is a collaborative vision by a human-drone assemblage that should be understood as an embodied vision. Blue Sky Days problematizes the effect of the vertical perspective and the necropolitical logic to which it invites. In contemporary warfare, the digital drone image is no longer treated as a passive representation, but as an active entity, being part of a process. Blue Sky Days as a series of static photographic images emphasizes ambiguity and undecidibility, which contrasts the visuality of certainty employed by synthetic vision systems. Van Houtryve uses a strategy of anthropomorphism, a strategy that raises awareness for the fact that agency is distributed by human and nonhuman forces. His series humanizes the other, encourages empathy for the people living under the drone, which contrast the current of anthropophobia in synthetic imagery. In the last chapter, I discuss the series in relation to the debates around representation that troubled documentary photography, war photojournalism and art. Now hypermediacy and immediacy seem both a strategy by the military to create a civic weaponized eye, Van Houtryve’s drone photography is an interesting alternative gesture by emphasizing the process of remediation.Show less
When looking at the photobook as medium, it becomes apparent that the photobook has mostly been discussed as a presentation and storage tool but not as a medium of its own. Approaching the...Show moreWhen looking at the photobook as medium, it becomes apparent that the photobook has mostly been discussed as a presentation and storage tool but not as a medium of its own. Approaching the photobook as a medium from a historical perspective, it is interesting that the photobook, when discussed in an academic framework, has been theorized in matter of style and substance, looking at the evolution of the design and content of the photobook, but not in audience experience. At first glance, walking as a physical act and the reader-like walking through a photobook share the superficial characteristic of the possibility of freedom, as both the chosen path through the photobook and through walking is steered by the reader-spectator’s unique personality and life experience, which is not completely controlled by the author-artist and as such can have an unpredictable outcome. In this thesis, I aim to substantiate this claim. The reader-spectator’s hand turning the photobook’s pages are reminiscent of the wanderer’s feet exploring a path. To underline this argument, the act of walking is interpreted as metaphor. Where in an installation or exhibition space the spectator approached the artworks literally through their feet, now the reader-spectator approaches the photobook with their hands. In approaching the reader-spectator experience from this perspective, this research becomes also an investigation of the medium of the photobook.Show less
The thesis looks closer at vernacular photography, a record of the everyday created by common people, as one of the most common ways in which photographic images are created. By using the specific...Show moreThe thesis looks closer at vernacular photography, a record of the everyday created by common people, as one of the most common ways in which photographic images are created. By using the specific example of the family photographic collection of John “Zbyszek” Jagla, a Polish refugee born in Uganda, the thesis examines different dimensions of photographic meaning. The analysis draws on research from within the field of photographic theory and applies those theories and approaches to demonstrate the ways in which photographs carry their own meaning, both as images and as objects, and how that meaning changes not just over time but also depending on their context and who is viewing them and why.Show less
In an assessment of Michael MacGarry's work 'Race of Man' I research the element of violence related to whiteness in the light of Galtung's theory about violence, Mbembe's theory of the post-colony...Show moreIn an assessment of Michael MacGarry's work 'Race of Man' I research the element of violence related to whiteness in the light of Galtung's theory about violence, Mbembe's theory of the post-colony, and in comparison to two other works that deal with violence: Mohau Modisakeng's 'Ke Kgamo ya moshate' as related to violence and blackness, and Jane Alexander's 'Butcher Boys' as related to history and apartheid.Show less
