Abstract

This thesis explores issues of closeness and distance within families. By looking at how aspects of cultural identity further complicate this dynamic as well as how photography is used as a way of mapping a family character, this thesis encompasses topics ranging from Argentine artists to early daguerreotype photography. Using her own Argentine- American heritage as a subject for the photographs, the artist focuses on her grandfather's apartment in Argentina, which acts as a stage, and character in her family story. Traditional modes of photographic posing are borrowed and explored in this work, not only to reference the old photographs that occupy the apartment in Argentina but also to portray a kind of photographic genealogy, connecting one family member to another by similarities in pose and style. The work as a whole acts as a new chapter in a continuing family album. It deals with the mapping of genealogy as compared to the mapping of a place like a city or the apartment. An intimate space of memory and nostalgia, the apartment has a foreign quality that dislocates viewers spatially and temporally.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Photography, Artistic--Themes, motives; Photography, Artistic--Technique; Portrait photography--Themes, motives; Portrait photography--Technique; Families in art

Publication Date

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Imaging Arts (MFA)

Advisor

Angela Kelly

Advisor/Committee Member

Jessica Leiberman

Advisor/Committee Member

Clarence Sheffield

Comments

Physical copy available from RIT's Wallace Library at TR642 .D38 2008

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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