Abstract
My thesis project uses compositional strategies to de-contextualize images and exploits photography's inherent ambiguity in form and content. My photographs reveal an artificial environment established by isolating everyday objects and turning them into abstractions. Using formal strategies, these objects are detached from their original environments and re-interpreted. The significance of the objects no longer relies on their social functions, but on how they appear in the two-dimensional composition. Thus, the resulting images become new facts through the photographic process. A photograph is not only an image, but also an autonomous conceptual and physical object. My work reinforces an object-like quality by creating various image groups and leaving the prints untrimmed. These decisions do not reflect the content but emphasize the significance of the visual presence of the physical photographs, determined by the serial format, the space in which it is situated, and the paper. Additionally, color adds another subjective dimension since color is rendered differently depending on the film and printing process, pushing further the idea that the photograph represents a new fact. This work reflects my thoughts on photography. My images celebrate the resulting ambiguity made by re-defining an object as a new fact, which is merely a fragment, a partial truth. They cannot speak for more than what they are. They simply exist.
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Photography, Abstract; Still-life photography--Technique; Photography, Artistic--Technique
Publication Date
4-22-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Student Type
Graduate
Degree Name
Photography and Related Media (MFA)
Department, Program, or Center
School of Photographic Arts and Sciences (CAD)
Advisor
Joshua Thorson
Advisor/Committee Member
Ahndraya Parlato
Advisor/Committee Member
Gregory Halpern
Recommended Citation
Qin, Haidong, "Anonymous Objects" (2022). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from
https://repository.rit.edu/theses/11124
Campus
RIT – Main Campus
Plan Codes
IMGART-MFA