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

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

IMGART-MFA

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