Photography Theory

A Review of the Relevant Merits and Disadvantages of the Current Assessment Methods used in the Photography BTEC Extended Diploma Course

by Ben Macloughlin

This paper explores the current assessment method used in a Photography BTEC course. It reveals the role of formative... more This paper explores the current assessment method used in a Photography BTEC course. It reveals the role of formative and summative assessment methods in Photography. It identifies the differences between the use of sketchbooks, PowerPoint and blogs to track learner progress and for receiving feedback. The research takes into account the views of the learners and their tutors and offers an insight into teaching and learning styles. The aim of the paper is to discover which assessment method best suits Photography and can possibly raise the standards of teaching and learning in the UK.

Extending current boundaries between the private, domestic and public display of mourning, love and visual culture in Mexico City

by Marcel Reyes-Cortez

2012: Social History, (May, Routledge), pp. 117-141.

Fotoğrafın Toplumsal Tanımı (çev.) ‘La définition sociale de la photographie’ Pierre Bourdieu

by Özgür Yaren

Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘The Social Definition of Photography’, Photography A Middle-brow Art, Shaun Whiteside (Trans.), Cambrdige:Polity Press, 1998. 73-98.

Pierre Bourdieu et al., Un art moyen: Essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie, 1965. Pierre Bourdieu et al., Un art moyen: Essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie, 1965.

Family Photography as a phatic construction

by Patri Prieto

Published in 'Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network', Vol. 3, No. 2 (2010)

When the camera became a domestic consumer good, photography was adapted to the needs of private production and... more When the camera became a domestic consumer good, photography was adapted to the needs of private production and reception (Slater, 1991: 50). The family archive contains images of selfportrayal, whose form is oriented towards established patterns, like cartes-de-visite, since they are  received privately as well as in a quasi-public area (wallet, desk in an office etc.).

Family photography gains its performative character by means of its phatic function (Malinowski, 1923/1949: 315-7), inscribed in a historical and socio-cultural frame (Hirsch, M. 1997: 10-2). It actuates in the border between naivety and formality, and these Memory-Pictures (Keppler, 1994: 187) create an impression of reliability and authenticity by their ritualized reception.

The storage in a family archive and the perfomativity of its reception oscillate between the paradigm of scripture and the regime of narration (Langford, 2006: 227). The characterization of the media category ‘family photography’ by means of the phatic function of communication, and the identification of suitable tools for the analysis, are the topics of this article.

"Phantasmaphotography"

by Kas Saghafi

Communicating with the Dead: Social Visibility in the Cemeteries of Mexico City

by Marcel Reyes-Cortez

2010: Die Realität des Todes: Zum gegenwärtigen Wandel von Totenbildern und Erinnerungskulturen (Visibility of Death), Dominik Groß, Christoph Schweikardt (Edts), pp.33-62, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.

Process and Authority: Marina Abramovic's Freeing the Horizon and Documentarity

by Mechtild Widrich

in Grey Room, 47 (Spring 2012), 8-97.

I am looking at a rarely known early slide installation by Marina Abramovic (1973), which consists of manipulated... more I am looking at a rarely known early slide installation by Marina Abramovic (1973), which consists of manipulated photographs of buildings in Belgrade. Looking at the reception and exhibition history as well as at the context of early 1970s Yugoslavia, I argue for a processual definition of the documentary that is context responsive.

'The pleasures and terrors of institutional comfort: conversation with the photographer Magali Nougarède'

by Paul Jobling

Extract from conversation, recorded on 20 May 2009, Floc Gallery Space, University of Wales, Newport

The hidden image: Latency in Photography and Cryptography in the 19th Century

by Nadja Lenz

published in the Photoresearcher No 17/April 2012

Facing the Camera: Self-portraits of Photographers as Artists

by Dawn Wilson (née Phillips)

published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism January 2012 (70:1)

Self-portrait photography presents an elucidatory range of cases for investigating the relationship between automatism... more Self-portrait photography presents an elucidatory range of cases for investigating the relationship between automatism and artistic agency in photography— a relationship that is seen as a problem in the philosophy of art. I discuss self-portraits by photographers who examine and portray their own identities as artists working in the medium of photography. I argue that the automatism inherent in the production of a photograph has made it possible for artists to extend the tradition of self-portraiture in a way that is radically different from previous visual arts.

In Section I, I explain why self-portraiture offers a way to address the apparent conflict between automatism and agency that is debated in the philosophy of art. In Section II, I explain why mirrors play an important function in the production of a traditional self-portrait. In Sections III and IV, I discuss how photographers may create self-portraits with and without the use of mirrors to show how photography offers unique and important new forms of self-portraiture.

EDGAR ALLAN POE – Detalhes, sombras e reflexos – afinidades estéticas e subversões iconográficas

by Maria de Fatima Lambert

Mourning the Family Album

by Tahneer Oksman

Studies in Comics 1.2 (November 2010)

Lomo-FI (v.): To Expose the Haecceities that Pose for Your Lomography Camera

by Alexander Monea

Published in 'Rhizomes' Issue 23, 2012

Gilles Deleuze held a rather ambivalent position on whether or not photography could be properly artistic. At times... more Gilles Deleuze held a rather ambivalent position on whether or not photography could be properly artistic. At times Deleuze accepts that there are miraculous instances of artistic photography and cinematography. At most times though, he denounces photography as a purely representative art, which, as such, is ontologically incapable of producing anything new. All photographs, for Deleuze, are ultimately doomed to cliché, and thus are incapable of rising to the level of art or philosophical concepts. This article makes the case that a new school or movement in photography called Lomography is capable breaking free of clichés and representationalism. Lomography as a practice, the Lomo camera as an instrument, and the Lomographer are jointly capable of uncovering a haecceity – which Deleuze alternately refers to as an event – and building refrains that capture a large enough portion of that haecceity’s intensity for the viewer of the Lomograph to experience it as well.

‘Fashion/Portraiture/Photography: Deconstructing Photo-identities’, for Masquerade – Women’s Contemporary Portrait Photography (Ellipsis Vol. 2), edited by K Newton and C Rolph (Cardiff: Ffotogallery, 2003, ISBN 1 872771 36 X), p. 62-9

by Paul Jobling

‘On the Turn – Millennial Bodies and the Meaning of Time in Andrea Giacobbe’s Fashion Photography’, Fashion Theory, Vol.6, No.1 (2002), p. 3-24

by Paul Jobling

By 1993 representations of millennial angst began to emerge in several fashion spreads in Britain. Thus themes and... more By 1993 representations of millennial angst began to emerge in several fashion spreads in Britain. Thus themes and issues such as heroin chic and youth rebellion and aimlessness became more common as a way to connote the alienation and hollowness of late twentieth century consumer culture.
The relationship of the turn of the millennium to identity and the tension between traditional values and new beginnings are the key themes that are elaborated in this essay with specific reference to the work of Andrea Giacobbe, and in particular to the symbolism of one of his fashion spreads, ‘Simplex Concordia’, which appeared in The Face in July 1996. On the one hand, it deals with the kinds of corporeal transubstantiation that take place in the spread in the context of cyborg theory, which as scientist Donna Haraway has cogently argued, ‘can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves’. And on the other, it accounts for the temporal symbolism of the spread in terms of kairos – a form of redemptive or apocalyptic time - that seems to offer, as literary critic Frank Kermode contends, ‘... an escape from chronicity, and so, in some measure, a deviation from this norm of ‘reality’’.

‘Who’s That Girl?’ “Alex Eats”: a case study in abjection in fashion photography’, Journal of Fashion Theory, Vol.2, No.3, 1998, p. 209-24

by Paul Jobling

This essay explores the objectification of female sexuality and the ideal of the ‘girl’ by concentrating on the... more This essay explores the objectification of female sexuality and the ideal of the ‘girl’ by concentrating on the fashion shoot ‘Alex Eats’, photographed by Anthony Gordon and styled by Katy Lush, which first appeared in The Face, in April 1988. Across ten pages we observe the scantily clad Alex in a series of tableaux that have been photographed in actual locations in London’s east and west ends. Facetiously subtitled ‘Fashion Offensive - Glutton Dressed as Glam’, as she moves from one locale to another a loose narrative based on anorexia-bulimia also seems to unfold and the model’s fetishistic involvement with food is graphically portrayed. Starting with Alex pigging out on a hamburger, French fries and milkshake in Ed’s Easy Diner, Old Compton Street, it progresses to her bingeing on junk food in the toilet of Maison Bertaux in Greek Street, and ends up with her messily guzzling a pot of yoghurt with her bare hands in the Star Food and Wine supermarket, Uxbridge Road. Accordingly this article considers both the imbrication of power and pleasure and the ambiguous psychosexual identities that the spread appears to deal with by analysing the body of the ‘girl’ in the context of theories of abjection and incorporation.

‘If a Picture Paints a Thousand Words, Then What Should We Expect of Fashion Photography?’, Journal of Design History, Vol.14, No.4 (2001), p. 361-67

by Paul Jobling

Documentary: Witness and Self-revelation

by John Ellis

Book published by Routledge, August 2011
ISBN: 978-0-415-57419-8

Digital technologies have transfrmed documentary for both filmmakers and audiences. 'Documentary: Witness and... more Digital technologies have transfrmed documentary for both filmmakers and audiences. 'Documentary: Witness and Self-revelation' takes an audience-centred approach to documentary, arguing that everyday experiences of what it feels like to film and be filmed have developed a new sophistication and scepticism in today's viewers. The book argues that documentary has developed a new third phase of its century-long history: films now tend to document the encoutnerrs between filmmakers (or 'filmers') and the filmed. It then asks whether those sceptical viewers truly understand the complex ineractions that take place when the cameras and sound recorrders are turned on...

Ediarché 2012. Il III Salone dell'Editoria Archeologica di Roma. Dalla Biblioarché ai convegni. Anteprima.

by Simona Sanchirico

Remembrance

by annette kuhn

This essay was originally published as a chapter in Jo Spence and Patricia Holland (eds), Family Snaps and has subsequently been anthologised a number of times. A revised version appears in the book Family Secrets.