Vandalism as Symbolic Reparation

The 2018 anti-government protests in Nicaragua generated a vast amount of photographic imagery, video documentation, and visual graphics. On the street and via social media, everyday citizens engaged with this material, activating a multisensory environment. The production of visual content was nonetheless accompanied by iconoclastic gestures; vandalism became a means of reclaiming Nicaragua’s revolutionary past and its symbols, while deploying them towards the making of a yet to be imagined political future. Drawing on examples from Chile and Mexico, the article argues that acts of vandalism may be understood as symbolically reparative. The materiality of the protests, manifested through image, trace, gesture, and sound (slogans, chants, noise) becomes a means towards analysing, ethnographically, revolutionary imaginaries caught within the flux of an unsettled present.

A full catalogue and analysis of a collection of postcards at the Art Gallery of Ontario depicting scenes of Toronto

This applied thesis is focused on the full cataloguing and contextualizing of a collection of one hundred and sixteen postcards at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) depicting scenes of Toronto a the beginning of the twentieth century. Twenty-seven publishers representing international, national and regional manufacturers are identified with their imprint on the verso of the postcard. The applied thesis includes a literature survey discussing a rationale for the cataloguing of postcards, as well as a brief overview of the history of postcards and the history of the urbanization of the City of Toronto. A description and analysis of the AGO postcards provides information about the production cycle of postcards, the scope of commercial photography and the dissemination of photographic imagery in Toronto. The thesis also examines the way images were altered in the production cycle and the manner in which photographers and publishers exchanged photographs intended for postcard production.

A full catalogue and analysis of a collection of postcards at the Art Gallery of Ontario depicting scenes of Toronto

This applied thesis is focused on the full cataloguing and contextualizing of a collection of one hundred and sixteen postcards at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) depicting scenes of Toronto a the beginning of the twentieth century. Twenty-seven publishers representing international, national and regional manufacturers are identified with their imprint on the verso of the postcard. The applied thesis includes a literature survey discussing a rationale for the cataloguing of postcards, as well as a brief overview of the history of postcards and the history of the urbanization of the City of Toronto. A description and analysis of the AGO postcards provides information about the production cycle of postcards, the scope of commercial photography and the dissemination of photographic imagery in Toronto. The thesis also examines the way images were altered in the production cycle and the manner in which photographers and publishers exchanged photographs intended for postcard production.

Attaining An Ideal : Time, Technology And The Victorian Family Composite

Combined photographic imagery is a broad and varied category of photography even when narrowed down to nineteenth-century iterations such as the composite technique. While a general understanding of composite photography exists, there is a lack of scholarship regarding a specific variant, the Victorian family composite. Using a study group of five Victorian family composites and photocollages, this thesis explores the importance of the family and of photography in Victorian society in order to arrive at an understanding of the particular motivations behind choosing the composite technique to represent the family. The determining factors include the need to overcome the technical and logistical limitations of nineteenth-century photography, as well as the aesthetics inherent to the composite process. Although the full trajectory of composite photography is not traced, definitions of major nineteenth and early twentieth-century combined imagery techniques are offered in order to contextualize the images discussed.

Attaining An Ideal : Time, Technology And The Victorian Family Composite

Combined photographic imagery is a broad and varied category of photography even when narrowed down to nineteenth-century iterations such as the composite technique. While a general understanding of composite photography exists, there is a lack of scholarship regarding a specific variant, the Victorian family composite. Using a study group of five Victorian family composites and photocollages, this thesis explores the importance of the family and of photography in Victorian society in order to arrive at an understanding of the particular motivations behind choosing the composite technique to represent the family. The determining factors include the need to overcome the technical and logistical limitations of nineteenth-century photography, as well as the aesthetics inherent to the composite process. Although the full trajectory of composite photography is not traced, definitions of major nineteenth and early twentieth-century combined imagery techniques are offered in order to contextualize the images discussed.

Consuming figures: a comparative study of visual conventions in fashion, advertising, and pornography

This thesis is concerned with the complex relations between consumerism, visual representations, and sex evident in the comparison of pornography and mainstream fashion advertising. Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Playboy are the primary materials used to identify representational tactics unique to, and common between, pornography and fashion magazines. Multiple methods are used to analyze and engage with the visual conventions found in examples of each genre's source materials. Claims of diffusion between the genres are assessed through quantitative content analysis, which is in turn examined through semiotics, and ultimately interpreted through artistic practice. This is in order to gain general insight into how desire and meaning are transmitted through the photographic imagery popularized by each genre. The purpose of this study is to illuminate how sexualized images are reproduced and manipulated to stimulate, satiate, and direct desire for divergent commercial purposes.

Consuming figures: a comparative study of visual conventions in fashion, advertising, and pornography

This thesis is concerned with the complex relations between consumerism, visual representations, and sex evident in the comparison of pornography and mainstream fashion advertising. Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Playboy are the primary materials used to identify representational tactics unique to, and common between, pornography and fashion magazines. Multiple methods are used to analyze and engage with the visual conventions found in examples of each genre's source materials. Claims of diffusion between the genres are assessed through quantitative content analysis, which is in turn examined through semiotics, and ultimately interpreted through artistic practice. This is in order to gain general insight into how desire and meaning are transmitted through the photographic imagery popularized by each genre. The purpose of this study is to illuminate how sexualized images are reproduced and manipulated to stimulate, satiate, and direct desire for divergent commercial purposes.

Destroying Modernity: The World Trade Center

This chapter centers on the World Trade Center disaster and how its significance was interpreted through photographic imagery and the mass media. The spectacle of destruction has never been more vividly recorded than in the imagery of 9/11. The chapter discusses the work of two influential documentary photographers—James Nachtwey and Joel Meyerowitz—and what they were trying to achieve. But 9/11 photographs were also collected in two major archives that are discussed in the chapter—Here Is New York and the Library of Congress’s September 11 project—with their contrasting goals. The question of the “iconic” image is discussed in terms of the Falling Man photos, and the chapter concludes with a consideration of the extreme aestheticizing of the event in the remarks of composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, which caused an uproar in Europe and the US.

Collapsing time: LGBTQ+ rights in Northern Ireland, A Queer Céilí at the Marty Forsythe

This article examines Kabosh Theatre Company’s production of Dominic Montague’s A Queer Céilí at the Marty Forsythe, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during its first run in March 2019. Based on archival research and personal accounts of a weekend surrounding the October 1983 National Union of Students Lesbian and Gay Conference in Belfast, the play depicts a moment of lesbian and gay activism largely neglected in critical and popular historical accounts of the period known as the ‘Troubles’ (1968–98). Through observation of rehearsals and performances as well as in-depth interviews with audiences and artists, we argue that the play’s situation in the venue, where many of the events portrayed originally took place, and the use of archival and found photographic imagery as key scenic elements create a sense of ‘collapsed time’ that brings the past into dialogue with the present and future, particularly regarding the relationship of LGBTQ+ rights to societal reconciliation.

Ethical dangers of facial phenotyping through photography in psychiatric genomics studies

Psychiatric genomics research protocols are increasingly incorporating tools of deep phenotyping to observe and examine phenotypic abnormalities among individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. In particular, photography and the use of two-dimensional and three-dimensional facial analysis is thought to shed further light on the phenotypic expression of the genes underlying neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as provide potential diagnostic tools for clinicians. In this paper, I argue that the research use of photography to aid facial phenotyping raises deeply fraught issues from an ethical point of view. First, the process of objectification through photographic imagery and facial analysis could potentially worsen the stigmatisation of persons with neurodevelopmental disorders. Second, the use of photography for facial phenotyping has worrying parallels with the historical misuse of photography to advance positive and negative eugenics around race, ethnicity and intellectual disability. The paper recommends ethical caution in the use of photography and facial phenotyping in psychiatric genomics studies exploring neurodevelopmental disorders, outlining certain necessary safeguards, such as a critical awareness of the history of anthropometric photography use among scientists, as well as the exploration of photographic methodologies that could potentially empower individuals with disabilities.