Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social-documentary photography'

Bibliography: p. 92-93.
My work questions social and cultural constructs of 'normality' and, by focusing on the practices of marginalised communities, questions dominant cultural conventions of female identity, beauty and sexuality. Within visual media, if the private or unsaid of female experience is said, it is seen as subversive. By focusing on four female initiations, my intention is to develop a specific yet complex comparison of different types of initiations. Embedded within the communities I have photographed are unique perceptions of beauty, each of which differs from mainstream notions. My intention is not to exoticise any particular community, but to explore some sub-cultures of female youth in South Africa, and to unfold how these women position themselves in post-Apartheid South Africa. An important component of the work is the relationship of the subject to the documentary process. I hope both to raise questions and also provide some answers concerning how the means of signification functions for the subjects. As the photographer of their transformation process, I am positioned as an outsider in their lives. As a means of acknowledging this, I include a series of photographs taken or directed by the women themselves, alongside my own. In doing so, my intention is to create a visual dialogue with the subjects, effectively offering them the opportunity to reply to my images with their own. This is not meant as a patronising gesture of political correctness, but as a means of attaining a more complete narrative while at the same time exploring complexities inherent in the play between 'inside' and 'outside' perspectives. My editing of their self-portraits positions me as a curator in this facet of the project.

This critical appraisal presents the processes and outcomes of a coherent research programme carried out between June 2008 and June 2011 that interrogates the representation of disabled people through in-depth, practice-led case study and analysis, leading to the formulation of a praxis framework for presenting collaborative social documentary photography practices associated with disability. Through the systematic production of bodies of commissioned and personal projects, both successful and unsuccessful, an epistemology of practice is presented that constitutes an independent and original contribution to knowledge. This practice-led research investigates claims that photographic images of disabled people often fail to represent individuals as empowered members of society because of societal references to stereotyped constructions of 'otherness' defined by negative signs of their disability. In order to question this, polemics from disability rights commentators who have referred to, but failed to engage fully with discourses surrounding photographic ontologies and professional practices, thereby constructing a binary line between disabled subjects and their image-makers, are challenged. The implication in their arguments is that photographers have been participating, knowingly or unknowingly, in disablist practices, contributing to the 'othering' of disabled people. By taking an interdisciplinary approach, co-locating photography and disability studies' theoretical frames within the trope of collaborative social documentary practice, orthodoxies surrounding representational outcomes are challenged by investing disabled people with the responsibility for the construction of their own images. Therefore, it contributes to the body of photographic theory concerning representations of the 'other' demonstrating that collaboration is a complex landscape of asymmetrical power structures on many levels -client, photographer, subject, audience - that are difficult to stabilise. By demonstrating synergy between academic theory and professional practice through publication, exhibition and critical discourse, this investigation informs and gives voice to disabled people themselves. Moreover, it adds to, and stimulates scholarly debate on a high-profile public matter by informing policy-makers, health professionals, commissioners and photographers on a controversial area of representation.

This thesis consists of two parts. The first is a series of photographic essays documenting the lived experience of a woman who is HIV positive and a group of young females who are socially marginalised. The written component attempts to underlabour in a philosophical sense for the artistic/creative element of the thesis. That is, it seeks to take on a range of theoretical issues that cluster around the practice of documentary photography. By clarifying these issues the thesis endeavours to act as a stimulus to artistic practice and also to explain and introduce that practice to a wider audience. Among the theoretical issues addressed is the ontological status of the documentary photograph. Here, the thesis draws upon Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism to suggest a rational alternative to postmodernist scepticism and naive realism. The thesis also takes on a range of ethical problems. Most important of these is the question whether the relationship between the photographer and her subject is inherently exploitative. The thesis attempts, in this case, to unite Emmauel Levinas' philosophy of the Other with Critical Realist Ethics. Here, the thesis advances a novel differentiation of the Other and combines this with the Critical Realist notion of ontological depth. The argument of the thesis is that the nature of the contract between the photographer and her subject depends on which Other the subject is regarded as. In addition, the thesis explores the social and gender dimensions of documentary photography concentrating in particular on the Farm Security Admininstration photography in America in the 1930s, and the radical self-imaging of the British photographer Jo Spence and the Pop Star Madonna.

Un groupe d'étudiants rassemblés par des idéaux artistiques se forme à l'Université de Californie San Diego dans la décennie 1970. Fred Lonidier, Martha Rosier, Allan Sekula et Phel Steinmetz, résolument tournés vers la photographie, élaborent une pensée collective sans toutefois former un groupe officiel. Pourtant, le partage d'une émulation propre à la côte Ouest du pays et à l'université où la pensée de figures tutélaires comme D. Antin, H. Marcuse, J. Baldessari, B. Brecht, H. Lefebvre ou H. Haacke stimule collectivement les esprits, confère aux méthodes et démarches des photographes une résonnance de groupe. En plus, Documentary and Corporate Violence, texte rédigé par A Sekula en 1976, utilise le terme de petit groupe pour qualifier les photographes. Ce texte auquel nous attribuons le statut de manifeste, critique la lecture moderniste des photographes documentaires américains traditionnels. Il expose également les attitudes mises au point par le groupe que nous identifions sous le nom de Nouveau Documentaire Social. Parmi celles-ci se distingue une pratique photographique documentaire ouverte à d'autres médium, une forte présence textuelle, des scénographies et circuits d'exposition repensés, des audiences élargies, un intérêt pour des thématiques ancrées dans l'actualité militante, ou encore un regard vers le quotidien et le banal comme témoins des bouleversements des schémas sociétaux. Objet à déconstruire, la photographie moderniste et les institutions qui la célèbrent représentent une tradition documentaire à renouveler. Ce contexte de remise en question collective et les propositions documentaires qui en sont issues constituent l'objet de cette étude
A group of students gathered around shared artistic ideals comes to life at University of California San Diego in the nineteen-seventies. Fred Lonidier, Martha Rosier, Allan Sekula and Phel Steinmetz, ail firmly focused on photography, elaborate a collective thought albeit never actually founding an official group. However, a shared emulation endemic to the West Coast and to the university where ideas birthed by leading thinkers such as D. Antin, H. Marcuse, J. Baldessari, B, Brecht, H Lefebvre or H. Haacke collectively stimulates the minds of those around, adds a certain group resonance to the photographers' methods and processes. Furthermore, Documentary and Corporate Violence, a text written by A Sekula in 1976, uses the term small group to refer to the photographers involved This text - to which we give the status of manifesto - criticizes the modernist reading of traditional american documentary photographers. It also exposes the attitudes developed by this group which we coin as New Social Documentary. We will distinguish one of these attitudes from the others : a documentary photographic practice which opens itself to other media, displays a strong textual presence, newly-thought scenography and exhibition paths, widened audiences, an interest in themes strongly anchored in contemporary activism, and which transforms what was so far considered as banal and mundane into testimonies of profound changes in societal structure. Modernist photography, an object to deconstruct, as well as the institutions that celebrate it represent a documentary tradition which needs to be renewed. The new documentary propositions along with the context of collective questioning from which they derive constitute the object of this study

The job of a historian is to understand what happened in the past, resorting in many cases to written documents as a firsthand source of information. Text, however, does not amount to the only source of knowledge. Pictorial representations, in fact, have also accompanied the main events of the historical timeline. In particular, the opportunity of visually representing circumstances has bloomed since the invention of photography, with the possibility of capturing in real-time the occurrence of a specific events. Thanks to the widespread use of digital technologies (e.g. smartphones and digital cameras), networking capabilities and consequent availability of multimedia content, the academic and industrial research communities have developed artificial intelligence (AI) paradigms with the aim of inferring, transferring and creating new layers of information from images, videos, etc. Now, while AI communities are devoting much of their attention to analyze digital images, from an historical research standpoint more interesting results may be obtained analyzing analog images representing the pre-digital era. Within the aforementioned scenario, the aim of this work is to analyze a collection of analog documentary photographs, building upon state-of-the-art deep learning techniques. In particular, the analysis carried out in this thesis aims at producing two following results: (a) produce the date of an image, and, (b) recognizing its background socio-cultural context,as defined by a group of historical-sociological researchers. Given these premises, the contribution of this work amounts to: (i) the introduction of an historical dataset including images of “Family Album” among all the twentieth century, (ii) the introduction of a new classification task regarding the identification of the socio-cultural context of an image, (iii) the exploitation of different deep learning architectures to perform the image dating and the image socio-cultural context classification.

Gideon Mendel’s ongoing photographic work documenting HIV/ AIDS, first started in 1993, has seen shifts not only in production but also in the author’s representation of his subjects. This paper looks at three texts of Mendel’s work, taken from three different stages of Mendel’s career and reads the shifting paradigm taking Mendel from photojournalist to activist armed with documentary photography as a tool of social change. This thesis explores how different positionings as an author and different representations of the subjects, living and dying, with HIV/AIDS influences meaning-making, and what that means for documentary photography as a tool of social change.

La photographie africaine contemporaine est ici celle que pratique les Africains vivant en Afrique. Durant notre période (1989-2009), le constat de l’absence de spécificité de la photographie africaine fait place au constat du regard photographique erroné que porte les Occidentaux sur l’Afrique. « Quelle est la vraie photographie africaine ? » est une des questions les plus souvent posées. En parallèle, le genre du portrait s’impose, en lutte contre un afropessimisme ambiant, tandis que les photographies documentaire et du réel montrent l’Afrique vécue par les Africains. Plus militante, la photographie citoyenne se développe et s’accompagne d’une hégémonie discursive. Mais la vraie photographie engagée est donnée par des pays anglophones qui contribuent à la marche collective vers la reconnaissance. Dans ce processus de reconnaissance, la France et les Etats-Unis jouent un rôle essentiel. L’intérêt porté par ces deux pays du Nord à la photographie africaine s’explique par l’existence d’une diaspora de photographes africains dont les travaux alimentent nombre de manifestations, palliant ainsi un déficit relatif en photographes locaux pratiquant une « photo d’art ». Dans ce contexte fragile, la pépinière de photographes sud-africains évoluant dans une économie de marché à l’occidentale prend à contre-pied les pays d’Afrique francophone où les fonctionnaires français répartissent des aides d’origine étatique et européenne. Cette Afrique du Sud, avec d’autres pays anglophones et le Mozambique, est le véritable porte-étendard d’une photographie africaine en gestation
Contemporary African photography is here photography practiced by Africans living in Africa. In our period (1989-2009), the acknowledgement of the absence of specificity of African photography takes the place of the photographic gaze brought by Westerners to Africa: “What is the real african photography?” is a question that characterizes this photography. In parallel, the portrait genre imposes itself, searching to end up outside of the consciences of an ambient afropsessimism, while documentary photographs show the Africa lived by Africans. Even more militant, citizen photography develops and is accompanied by a discursive hegemony. But the true photography engaged has been given by some of the Anglophone countries that therefore contribute to the collective march to recognition, France and the United States playing an essential role, since 1990, in this process. The interest in those two northern countries may also be explained by a diaspora of African photographers whose work feeds a number of manifestations that highlight a relative deficit of local photographers that practice “art photography”. In this fragile context, the nursery of South African photographers evolving in an economic market similar to that of the occident takes a counter-point to French speaking countries where French civil servants distribute state assistance of European origin. It is this South Africa, alongside other English speaking countries and Mozambique, that demonstrates the path of a clearly gestating African photography

“Phenomenology is the place where hermeneutics originates, phenomenology is also the place it has left behind.”(Ricoeur ). In this thesis I shall examine possibilities for bringing into dialogue the practice of social documentary photography and the conceptual resources of the post-Structural and critical philosophical hermeneutics of text and action developed by Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) from the 1970’s onwards. Ricoeur called this an ‘amplifying’ hermeneutics of language, defined as ‘the art of deciphering indirect meaning’ (ibid). Social documentary photography is an intentional activity concerned with the visual interpretation, ethics and representation of life, the otherness of others, and through them something about ourselves. The narratives form social histories of encounters with others. They raise challenging questions of meaning and interpretation in understanding the relations of their subjective agency to an objective reality. Traditionally the meaning of such work is propositional. It consists in the truth conditions of bearing witness to the direct experience of the world and the verifiability of what the photography says, or appears to say about it. To understand the meaning of the photography is to know what would make it true or false. This theory has proven useful and durable, although it has not gone unchallenged. The power it has is remarkable and new documentary narratives continue to be formed in this perspective, adapting to changing technologies, and reverberate with us today. A more subtle way of thinking about this is given by a pragmatic theory of meaning. This is what I am proposing. The focus here is upon use and what documentary photography does and says. A praxis that I refer to by the act of photographing: a discourse of locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary utterances in whose thoughtful and informed making are unified theories of visual texts within the theories of action and history. The key is the capacity to produce visual narratives made with intention and purpose that in their performative poetics and their semantic innovations attest to the realities of 1 Ricoeur, P. 1991: From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II. trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. 2nd Edition 2007: with new Forward by Richard Kearney. Evanston. NorthWestern University Press. experience and sedimented historical conditions witnessed, and communicate those to others within a dialectic of historical consciousness and understanding. The narrative visualisations disclose a world, a context in which the drama of our own life and the lives of others makes sense. In their interpretations of an empiric reality can be found ethical concerns and extensions of meaning beyond the original reference that survive the absence of the original subject matter and the original author of the photography whose inferences our imaginations and later acquired knowledge can meditate upon and re-interpret. Thus in the hermeneutic view, the documentary photographic narrative is a form of text that comes to occupy an autonomy from, a) the author’s original intentions, b) the reference of the original photographic context, and c) their reception, assimilation and understanding by unknown readers-viewers. Ricoeur argues that hermeneutic interpretation discloses the reader as ‘a second order reference standing in front of the text’, whose necessary presence solicits a series of multiple and often conflicting readings and interpretations. Consequently Ricoeur’s critical, philosophical hermeneutics brings us from epistemology to a kind of ‘truncated’ ontology that is only provisional, a place where interpretation is always something begun but never completed. Interpretation according to Ricoeur engages us within a hermeneutic circle of explanation and understanding whose dialectic is mediated in history and time. For Ricoeur this implies that to be able to interpret meaning and make sense of the world beyond us is to arrive in a conversation that has already begun. His hermeneutic wager is, moreover, that our self-understandings will be enriched by the encounter. In short, the more we understand others and what is meaningful for them the better we will be able to understand ourselves and our sense of inner meaning. The central thesis of his hermeneutics is that interpretation is an ongoing process that is never completed, belonging to meaning in and through distance, that can make actively present to the imagination what is objectively absent and whose discourse is undertood as the act of “someone saying something about something to someone” (Ricoeur 1995: Intellectual Autobiography).

This thesis is an attempt at understanding South African photography through the lens of Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, Tracy Rose, David Goldblatt, Jo Ractliffe and Santu Mofokeng. Through the works discussed this thesis intends to unpack photography as a complex medium similar to that of language and text, as well as attempt to understand how exploring South African experiences and spaces through the lens of photography shapes and mediates them. Furthermore it also attempts to understand how these experiences and spaces conversely affect the discourse of photography or at the very least our perception of it. Through these photographers and their works it is hoped that ultimately the interconnected relationship of exchanging codes that takes place between photography and society will be highlighted. The example of connectivity or dialogue I believe exists between the medium of photography and the physical/social and psychological spaces it photographs will be mediated through Deleuze and Guattari‟s conception of “the wasp and the orchid” where “the wasp becomes the orchid, just as the orchid becomes the wasp...an exchanging or capturing of each other‟s codes”. Other theorists I will be looking at include Vilém Flusser, focusing in particular on his book Towards a Philosophy of Photography, as well as Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes and others. The main aims and objectives of this thesis are to understand the veracity of the documentary image and whether or not the image harbours any objective truth, as well as whether truth, if it can truly be said to exist in the world, resides between the camera and the seen world. This dichotomy is further complicated by the matter of subject-hood and technical and philosophical understandings of the camera as an apparatus. At no point do I aim to be conclusive, rather it is hoped that by developing the dynamic tension between the theory and the image world that I will be able to bring fresh insight into the reading of a changing South African condition and the subject position of the photographer in relation to this condition.

Naryškin Romanas, Socialinis portretas Lietuvos fotografijoje, fotografijų ciklas „Nebūtini“: Audiovizualinio meno studijų bakalauro baigiamasis darbas / vadovas A. Uogintas; Šiaulių Universitetas, Menų fakultetas, Dailės katedra. Šiauliai, 2014 m. 43 p. Bakalauro darbe nagrinėjamas socialinis portretas fotografijoje pirmiausiai aptariant dokumentinę, tuomet – socialinę dokumentinę fotografiją, kalbama apie jos ištakas Lietuvoje remiantis Margaritos Matulytės teorine ţiūra. Kūrybiniam darbui išskiriama konkreti socialinės atskirties grupė – benamiai-elgetos, apibrėţiama benamystė kaip socialinė problema, trumpai apţvelgiama jos raida. Pirmame skyriuje apibrėţiama dokumentinė ir socialinė dokumentinė fotografija. Šių dviejų teorinių apybraiţų pagalba yra apibrėţiama socialinio portreto sąvoka, kadangi socialinis portretas iš esmės yra neatskiriama socialinės dokumentinės, o todėl ir dokumentinės fotografijos dalis. Išskiriami socialinio portreto bruoţai remiantis ankstyvaisiais socialinės dokumentinės fotografijos kūrėjų darbais. Antrame skyriuje aptariamas socialinis portretas pasirinkto socialinės dokumentinės fotografijos atstovo, Antano Sutkaus, kūryboje. Nagrinėjamas šio autoriaus portretų psichologiškumas bei braiţas, taip pat tokį braiţą įtakoję veiksniai, paminėti pirmąjame skyriuje. Trečiame skyriuje kalbama apie kūrybinį darba, fotografijų serija „Nebūtini“. Pirmiausiai aptariamos ir pagrįstai sugretinamos benamio ir elgetos sąvokos šio darbo kontekste, tuomet... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]
Naryškin Romanas, Social portrait in Lithuanian photography, photographic series „The Unnecessary“. Closing Bachelor„s work of multimedia art studies / lecturer A. Uogintas; Šiauliai University, Faculty of Arts, Art Department. Šiauliai 2014, 43 pages. In this Bachelor„s work the author is looking into social portrait photography by first of all discussing documentary photography, and then social-documentary photography as social portraiture is an inseparable part of these two similar genres. Further on the origins of social documentary photography is discussed based on M. Matulytė„s theoretical work on the subject. For the creative part of the work, a specific group of social isolation is chosen (homeless people) and its relevance as that of a social problem is explained with a short overview of the development of the said social problem. The first part touches the suject of both documentary and social documentary photography as a context for the theory on social portraiture, definition of which is then based on the mentioned genres. The similarities and differences between the genres are pointed out. The second part contains an overview of social-psichological portraiture in the works of Antanas Sutkus with detailed analysis of the psichological aspect of his portraits as well as general features peviously described in the social portrait definition. The third part is dedicated to the creative project of the Bachelor„s work. Choice of subject is explained through short... [to full text]

Art History
M.A.
Interpretations of the Politics of Fictive Landscapes in Context: A Comparison of Allan Sekula's Sketch on a Geography Lesson and Martha Rosler's In the Place of the Public Airport Series Throughout this thesis project I examine the geopolitical context(s) of the photographs featured in Martha Rosler's 'In the Place of the Public Airport Series' (1983) and Allan Sekula's series, 'Sketch on a Geography Lesson' (1982). I investigate the manner in which they question the legitimacy of the genre of documentary photography within the post-modern age by emphasizing the documentation of an actual physical place, presenting an alternative to the post-modern notion of photograph merely as another component of simulacra, or the intentional creation of an image without meaning or origin. By looking at photographs that Rosler and Sekula made during the burgeoning stages of post-modern theory, presents a broader interpretation of the development of Marxist documentary photography from the early 1980's to today. One way in which I dialogue with the discourse surrounding documentary photography in the 1980's is to focus on Rosler's and Sekula's intentional choice of material that emphasizes the political dialogue rather than concepts that are abstract and maintain no reference to real life. Furthermore, the period of the 1980's is considered a point in contemporary art history when the political fervor of the 1960's and early 1970's diminished greatly. Departing from this trend, Rosler's and Sekula's work continues to address political ideas throughout the 1980's, creating a bridge to today's photographers, such as Edward Burtynsky and Andreas Gursky who consider aesthetics from a socio-political perspective.
Temple University--Theses

This thesis explores social memory, migration, place and belonging and cultural citizenship in Pulaski, Virginia, after the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994). Through the lens of autoethnography, a participant-researcher model, I look closely at the affects that globalization has had on the economic and cultural life of this semi-rural community. The Autoethnographic approach has allowed me to reflect on my role as the co-author of oral and written narratives, a communal archive of historical images and a collection of collaborative photography. The impact of this thesis is, in part, a deeper understanding of collective social memory and the research we do on this subject exists in the border space between the self and community. As such, participant based modes of inquiry can help us help address the needs of academic institutions and expectation of community partners with a greater degree of success.

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES
This research analyzes the Chilean dictatorship during the 1980s, a period not very discussed in historiography, but a moment wich maintains a profound process of violence and persecution, from the images portrayed by Pablo Salas, a protest videographer who reveals arbitrariness practiced by the Chilean dictatorship. The research is based above all in images, taken as documents of the time, compared by the bibliography and documents produced by the Chilean State and denunciations. This reserarch also shows the direct mesh between the visual environment and the resistance and denunciation movements that expressed the class struggles, a period of great insecurity in which the tentacles of the persecutary state reached the people - which supplies the footage of images by Salas. These images synthesize a movement whose social function was to have succeeded in producing itself as an expression of the collectivity of particular social groups, of a sociabilities mesh that the years of state terrorism have not been able to destroy
Esta pesquisa analisa a ditadura chilena durante a década de 1980, período pouco discutido na historiografia, mas que mantém um processo profundo de violência e perseguições, a partir das imagens retratadas por Pablo Salas, cinegrafista de protesto que revela arbitrariedades praticadas pela ditadura. A pesquisa se ancora especialmente em imagens, tomadas como documentos da época, cotejadas pela bibliografia e documentos, produzidos pelo próprio Estado chileno, e denúncias. Também apresenta a ligação direta entre o ambiente das visualidades e os movimentos de resistência e denúncias que expressavam as lutas de classes, um período de grande insegurança no qual os tentáculos do Estado persecutório atingiram a população – o que fornece o material das imagens de Salas. Essas imagens sintetizam um movimento cuja função social foi a de ter conseguido se produzir enquanto expressão da coletividade de determinados grupos sociais, de uma rede de sociabilidades, que os anos de terrorismo de Estado não foram capazes de destruir

L'étude sur le documentaire a suscité ces dernières années de nombreuses approches : historique, rhétorique, pragmatique, stylistique. Celles-ci posent la question de la réalité dans le film ou dans la photographie, problématique récurrente du documentaire. C'est à nouveau cette interrogation qui sera abordée dans cette recherche. La perspective envisagée a l'ambition de synthétiser toutes ces approches en remontant à l'origine de la photographie, au dix-neuvième siècle, et en faisant valoir sa spécificité d'image. Un parcours photographique est proposé montrant en quoi l'image photographique a pu bouleverser notre rapport à la réalité. Cette ambition synthétique a trouvé son fondement dans un concept original initié par le philosophe allemand Ernst Cassirer : la forme symbolique. Il s'agit d'une logique culturelle qui propose de se placer au cœur de nos réalités et d'analyser les principes qui les gouvernent. Le point d'ancrage d'une telle philosophie repose sur la culture comprise comme une réalité relative. Dans cette perspective, l'image photographique en tant que documentaire est considéré comme un lieu donnant à penser une réalité ? Comment ? Cette recherche nous amène à envisagé trois moments pour l'élaboration de cette forme symbolique particulière : 1) l'invention d'une image-monde que l'image photographique a suscité ; 2) la survivance des réalités contenues et transformées dans cette image-monde ; 3) la création d'un lieu de mémoire par la constitution d'un patrimoine photographique.

Esta tese complementa-se com um documentário intitulado Espaços da memória. Ele é resultado de uma intervenção visual colaborativa realizada por pesquisadores, dentre os quais este autor, e por moradores de São Luiz do Paraitinga, SP. Espaços da memória foi viabilizado pelo 1º Edital de Cultura e Extensão da Pró-Reitoria da USP de 2012. Um dos motivos para termos escolhido esta cidade é o de que ela reúne famílias e amigos que têm uma longa história de habitação e convívio na comunidade. Hoje patrimônio histórico nacional, ela também é patrimônio cultural dos que ali vivem, e que se concretiza no espaço de suas construções, das casas e ruas por onde organizam-se e depositam-se as histórias de famílias. O outro, foi porque a cidade sofreu uma grande enchente em janeiro de 2010, em que boa parte da população sofreu muitas perdas materiais. Foi de ampla divulgação na mídia, naquele momento, a destruição material ocorrida na cidade, em função das chuvas que derrubaram construções e transformaram as ruas, por semanas, em espaços tomados pelas águas, que arrastaram consigo tudo o que encontravam pela frente. Depois disso, a cidade enfrentou um longo processo de recuperação do legado perdido. A intervenção desenvolveu uma documentação observacional dos habitantes em seu cotidiano de reconstrução, propondo exercícios de rememoração por meio da coparticipação em algumas atividades, como rodas de conversa conosco, oficinas de fotografia, nas quais pudemos orientar os moradores a criarem suas imagens mais significativas. Investigamos as relações entre famílias e amigos e seus espaços de forma multidisciplinar, ou seja, levando em consideração aspectos históricos, psicológicos dessas relações, e da forma como se dão num contexto específico de representação com imagens. As imagens produzidas por eles serviram de estrutura para o roteiro do documentário, que incorporou uma seleção de fotos em sua narrativa. A partir destas impressões visuais e memoriais criamos um filme como dispositivo fílmico. Um dos aspectos do dispositivo é ser um filme ensaio que mostrar em sua narrativa o processo de realização dele próprio, evitando a neutralidade da equipe de filmagem. O dispositivo salienta estas relações do fazer compartilhado, juntando as habilidades dos pesquisadores com os olhares e os sentidos formados pelos moradores com suas fotografias, suas relações com a imagem e a memória. Esta intervenção visual qualitativa foi a base de pesquisa para esta tese, que analisa a produção de imagens como forma de pesquisa. Neste estudo, descrevemos o método do dispositivo fílmico e a intervenção videofotográfica nos quais os objetos-personagens se tornaram colaboradores realizadores, trabalhando a imagem como um fim em si mesmo. Acreditamos que com o fácil acesso aos aparatos numérico-digitais, o processo realizado nesta experiência pode oferecer algum grau de ineditismo para as pesquisas na Psicologia Social
This thesis is complemented with a documentary that holds the title Memory Spaces. It is the result of a collaborative visual intervention carried out by researchers, among which this author, and dwellers of São Luiz do Paraitinga, SP. Memory Spaces was made feasible by the 1st Call-for-Bid for Culture and Extension at the Pro-Rectorship at USP in 2012. One of the reasons for having chosen this city is that it brings together families and friends that have a long history of sharing housing and living together in the community. Currently a national heritage, it is also the cultural heritage for those who live there, and that becomes materialized in the space of their constructions, the houses and the streets through which they get organized and where they deposit the history of their families. The other, because the city suffered an enormous flood in January of 2010, in which a large part of the population suffered significant material losses. This was broadly disseminated in the press, at that time, the material destruction that had taken place in the city, caused by the rains that tore down buildings and that for weeks on end transformed the streets into spaces taken over by the waters, that dragged with them whatever they found in their path. Ensuing that, the city faced a lengthy recovery process of the legacy it had lost. The intervention developed an observational documentation of the inhabitants in the day-to-day of reconstruction, proposing memory or reminiscing exercises through co-participation in some activities, such as conversation rounds, photography workshops in which we managed to guide dwellers to register their significant images. We researched the relationships between families and their spaces in a multidisciplinary way, that is, considering historical and psychological aspects, of such relationships, in the way they appear in a specific representation context with images. The images produced by them served as the backbone for the documentary script, that incorporated a selection of photos in its narrative. Based on these visual impressions and memories, we created a film as a filmic device. The so-called device avoids the filming teams and the research´s neutrality regarding the work. The device emphasizes the relationship of shared work, bringing together the skills of researchers with the looks and feelings formed by the dwellers with their photographs, their relationships with the image and memory. This qualitative visual intervention was the groundwork for the research of this thesis, that is aimed at objectively reflecting on the production of images as a form of research. The collective production of images as a form of expression. In Social Psychology interventions seems to be a little used procedure or one that is not well known. In this study, we describe the filming method and the video-photographic intervention in which the objects-characters have become collaborators and producers, working with the image as an end. We are convinced that with easy access to numerical-digital devices, the process carried out in this experience could offer some degree of newness or uniqueness to research in Social Psychology

With all the public information about any famous person, topic or event 'googleable’ on the Internet, there seems to be nothing new for 'digital natives’ to discover other than the elusive Self. The Self is the 'new frontier’ and the smartphone camera is at the forefront of this quest, unearthing and exhibiting different kinds of content everyday. With over 95 million photographs and videos shared on Instagram daily; Photography has merged with social networking sites and applications (SNS/A) to become a recognisable phenomenon called – 'Social’ Photography. Despite its rich association with legitimate visual art-forms and numerous scholarly articles examining it’s various forms – the term 'Social’ Photography is unfamiliar to most. This inquiry discusses 'Social’ Photography in relation to existing literature to argue for its establishment as a legitimate discipline within the Creative Arts. By acknowledging its subjectivity and utilization of digital technologies, this study employed an interpretive group of methods and identified six characteristics of 'Social’ Photography – namely, (i) Activity, (ii) Participation, (iii) Identity, (iv) Glamour, (v) Protest, and (vi) Spectacle – that exemplify its capacity to curate a meaningful democratic public image. These six aspects can be used to categorize and formalize individual behaviour that can be analysed and interpreted to foster a better understanding of 'Social’ Photography as a discipline.

The purpose of this essay is to examine documentary photographs using art-science methods. The subject of the analyzes is photographer Lauren Greenfield’s project Generation Wealth, which reflects the Western consumer culture of our time. From a social-constructivist perspective, three photographs from this 25-year project are examined. These three photographs follow the theme of money and portray three different occasions that are not related to each other, but which are linked here as three subsequent steps in the theme. With the help of Erwin Panofsky's iconological interpretation model, the photographs are examined to reach a deeper meaning than merely documents about an event or of specific individuals. The iconological interpretation helps to put the photographs in a wider context which makes them symbols of our time. On the basis of the preparatory analyzes, connections are made with art historical works that both visually and contextually becomes keys in the interpretation. The photography of Phoebe 17 years becomes a symbol of the role of young people, especially girls, as objects in a consumer system. Eli Broad Dinner Party symbolizes how money controls the art market while this photograph also play with gender order. The photograph of Florian Homm becomes evidence of the emptiness that comes with the quest to constantly achieve financial success.  The analyzes also discuss the division between documentary photography and art photography with the conclusion that such a division inhibits the photograph's sub-meanings. Such a division becomes a clear sign of social constructions and it’s need to categorize and place them in different fields. The essay discusses photography as a reality portrayal. This is a complex discussion which determines of the context in which the photograph is located. By simultaneously seeking an understanding of photography as a medium and by reading photography as a text, the photographs shows how social constructs are inherited and contribute to standards that keep people trapped in the culture of consumption.

L’œuvre photographique de Sebastião Salgado, qui focalise la condition de vie des personnes affectées par la souffrance sociale causée soit par la guerre, soit par l’exploitation et la misère, prime par la qualité de la composition esthétique, mais ses images ne sont pas produites dans le contexte de la photographie d’art. Elles s’inscrivent dans la catégorie de la photographie documentaire et leur finalité discursive est la dénonciation sociale. Une part des spécialistes de l’image et des sciences humaines et sociales estiment que ses images ne peuvent pas servir à un tel propos, car leur caractère artistique déforme la vérité de la réalité représentée. L’autre part, en revanche, considère que c’est justement de la forme esthétique qu’elles tirent leur force de communication sociopolitique. Il s’agit du vieux débat sur le rapport entre esthétique et politique réactualisé par la question contemporaine du rôle sociopolitique des représentations médiatiques de la souffrance sociale. Pour constituer notre corpus analytique nous nous sommes servis d’un échantillon d’articles des spécialistes, publiés dans la Presse, dans lesquels on trouve un discours argumenté pour ou contre l’approche photographique de Salgado. La mise en confrontation des argumentations d’opposants et de partisans a permis non seulement de faire une sorte de mise en épreuve de la pertinence des concepts théoriques évoqués en soutien, mais aussi de mettre en évidence les apriori éthiques, sociologiques et politiques qui sont à la base des jugements qui indiquent si l’on doit considérer l’approche énonciative de Salgado comme une bonne ou mauvaise façon de représenter la misère du monde
The photographic work of Sebastião Salgado focuses on the living conditions of people affected by social distress resulting from civil wars, exploitation, and misery. The pictures are characterised by the quality of their aesthetic composition but they are not primarily works of art. They are rather documentary pictures that represent a social denunciation of intolerable living conditions. Some social scientists specialised in photo interpretation think that his pictures still exhibit too many characteristics of art work and might therefore deform reality. However, others are convinced that just this aesthetic approach constitute its particular strength in sociopolitical communication. The contrasting views reflect the old debate on the relation between politics and aesthetics recently revived by the discussion on the socio-political role of the media in the presentation of social distress. This thesis is based on a representative sample of articles published in print media in which arguments for and against the photographic approach of Salgado are presented. The analytic comparison of the opposed arguments allows an evaluation of the related theoretical concepts. It also reveals an a priori basis of the related ethics, aesthetics, sociology, and politics indicating whether the denouncing character of Salgado pictures is representing an adequate approach to communicate the misery of the world

Cette thèse est la première monographie dédiée à Chauncey Hare (né en 1934), figure à la fois reconnue et marginale de la photographie documentaire américaine contemporaine. Auteur d'un corpus où se mêlent l'héritage de la Farm Security Administration, l'influence de la contre-culture, le souci de l'art et la critique du capitalisme, Hare a traversé le monde de la photographie entre les années 1960 et 1980 et connu un succès inégal. Son livre Interior America, commencé en 1968 et paru en 1978, lui vaut la reconnaissance du monde de l'art et devient un jalon du genre documentaire. Mais la portée politique de ces photographies, mise en avant par un photographe activiste, complique notamment leur réception institutionnelle. Cette thèse est basée sur l'étude des archives de Chauncey Hare, déposée en 2000 à l'université de Berkeley, ainsi que sur de longs entretiens avec lui et d'autres acteurs culturels de la baie de San Francisco. Elle s'appuie sur une définition étendue de l'oeuvre de Chauncey Hare, à la fois visuelle, textuelle et existentielle, et l'ancre dans le contexte de la Californie contre-culturelle des années 1960-70 qui l'a vu naître. À la croisée de l'histoire de l'art et de l'histoire culturelle, elle vise à en donner une vision précise et approfondie, à la fois descriptive, comparative et critique, pour déconstruire le mythe qui s'est élaboré autour du photographe et réintégrer l'oeuvre à ses différents réseaux (institutionnels, intellectuels, humains). Les quatre parties de cette étude couvrent l'intégralité de la vie de Chauncey Hare à ce jour, de 1934 à 2019
This dissertation is the first monographic study of Chauncey Hare's work and career. Born in 1934 and based in San Francisco, he is a key figure of American documentary photography. Hare's work combines the heritage of the Farm Security Administration, the influence of counter-culture, a strong artistic impetus and anti-capitalist worldview. His photographic career spans two decades, from the mid-1960 to the mid-1980s, but his success in the art world was short-lived : he achieved recognition with his book Interior America published in 1978, which eventually became a landmark for social documentary photography, but his political stance and activism complicated the institutional reception of his work. This dissertation is based on the study of Chauncey Hare's archives, stored at the Bancroft library (University of California-Berkeley) since 2000, and on a series of interviews conducted with him and other cultural players of the Bay Area. It considers Chauncey Hare's oeuvre in itsbroadest dimension, including his visual work, his texts but also his very existence as form of praxis. This large and diverse body of work is anchored in the text of 1960-70s counter-cultural California in which it was born. Art history and cultural history come together in this dissertation, whose aims are to give a first,precise, descriptive and critical overview of this body of work to deconstruct the myth surrounding the artist and to reintegrate the work in its various networks (institutional, intellectual, social). This dissertation is divided to four chronological parts, which cover Chauncey Hare's entire lifespan to date (1934-2019)

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Design in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2014
This study seeks to contribute to the field of documentary photography by looking at a resistance photographer who documented events during the liberation struggle against Apartheid in the 1980s in Cape Town, South Africa. The research explores the richness, depth and complexity of the reflective knowledge of the phenomenon and develops a sense of understanding of the meanings of the circumstances and social context of the researcher. It considers the thoughts, observations as well as reflections regarding the meanings and interpretations of experience as a photographer in the 1980s. The perspective of the research is to understand through the photographer’s memory the phenomenon of interest in the exhibition Martyrs, Saints & Sell-Outs and in so doing argue for a consideration of the lives of those who not only lived during Apartheid but continue to do so after its demise. In addition to thinking about questions of photographic representation, the study also addresses ideas of space, and unarticulated injuries and trauma. The photograph is well suited as a medium through which one may think about these difficult questions, for in its very inception, the medium is one of simultaneous absence and presence. The study concludes with recommendations for future investigation in the documentary photography narrative in Cape Town, South Africa.

碩士
國立成功大學
藝術研究所
97
Deng NanGuang was the pioneer of social documentary photography in Taiwan. His contribution and influence had a profound effect to Taiwan photography history. Deng’s social documentary photography works were affected by the learning background in Japan. After returning to Taiwan, he was dedicated to photography promotion, popularized positively numerous photographic academic societies and photography exhibitions. He was an important catalyst in the evolution of photography. Deng NanGuang’s photograph subjects were built on the social life, which had documentary and affective characteristic, conveying “direct appearance” and “subjective emotionality”. Containing Hakka culture, social phenomenon and monographic subjects of Deng’s works from 1935 to 1960, it expressed sensibility and intrinsic meaning of the character image. And he focused on “human subjects” as well as humanities concern. Deng NanGuang’s works were the transition from surface to subjectivity. In addition to the value of historic records and preservation, his works had the micro observation of social issues. Participated in society and concerned about human subjects, Deng NanGuang was the excellent representation of Taiwan photographer in early time.

The Douglas Summerland Collection is a fictional "monographically based history"1. In essence this research is concerned with the current debates about history recording, authenticity of the photograph, methods of history construction and how the audience digests new 'knowledge'. The narrative for this body of work is drawn from a small album of maritime photographs discovered in 2004 within the archives of the Port Chalmers Regional Maritime Museum in New Zealand. The album contains vernacular images of life onboard several sailing ships from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the DH Sterling and the William Mitchell. Through investigating the'truth' systems promoted by the photograph within the presentations of histories this research draws a link between the development of colonialism and the perception of photography. It also deliberates on how 'truth' perception is still a major part of an audience's knowledge base. 1. Anne-Marie Willis Picturing Australia: A History of Photography, Angus & Robertson Publishers, London. 1988:253

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for M.Tech.: Graphic Design, Durban University of Technology, 2011.
Social issues are a very real problem in South Africa. Violent protests in poorer communities around South Africa indicate a need to better understand negative social realities impacting on communities. This research examined the sociocultural context of Wentworth in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, as shown on the map on page x. The focus of this study was the social and community realities; and the significance of photography in the context of examining these. The aim was to use photography as a research tool as well as to document the data collected. From the data a 118-page book, as shown on page viii, was conceptualised, which captures this community’s social context. Further, the study questioned the use of design practice to support social change. Because of the distinctly “Coloured” nature of Wentworth, literature was sought for the definition, history, current dynamics and complexities of Coloured identity. The literature review highlighted ethics and the strategies that should be adhered to when considering the social nature of photography. For this inquiry a qualitative analysis was conducted using the Grounded Theory method. A collaborative, or participatory research approach, was used for data collection, by working closely with families and health, church and non-governmental groups in Wentworth. Qualitative data collection methods used to gather primary data were photographic documentation and interviews. This research produced a number of key findings regarding socio-cultural problems plaguing the community. Findings deemed photography a rich tool for researching the social and for accurately recording everyday life. The main conclusions drawn from this research were that in-depth studies be conducted on individual problems, utilising greater manpower and funding. In addition, that further research and documentation be undertaken in the community.

GAYME is a transmedia story-telling world that I have created to conceptually explore the dynamics of queering game design through the development of varying game prototypes. The final iteration of GAYME is @deadquarewalking'. It is a documentary game and a performance art installation that documents a carless, gay/queer/quare man's journey on Halloween to get to and from one of Orlando's most well-known gay clubs - the Parliament House Resort. "The art of cruising" city streets to seek out queer/quare companionship particularly amongst gay, male culture(s) is well-documented in densely, populated cities like New York, San Francisco and London, but not so much in car-centric, urban environments like Orlando that are less oriented towards pedestrians. Cruising has been and continues to be risky even in pedestrian-friendly cities but in Orlando cruising takes on a whole other dimension of danger. In 2011-2012, The Advocate magazine named Orlando one of the gayest cities in America (Breen, 2012). Transportation for America (2011) also named the Orlando metropolitan region the most dangerous city in the country for pedestrians. Living in Orlando without a car can be deadly as well as a significant barrier to connecting with other people, especially queer/quare people, because of Orlando's car-centric design. In Orlando, cars are sexy. At the same time, the increasing prevalence in gay, male culture(s) of geo-social, mobile phone applications using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and location aware services, such as Grindr (Grindr, LLC., 2009) and even FourSquare (Crowley and Selvadurai, 2009) and Instagram (Systrom and Krieger, 2010), is shifting the way gay/queer/quare Orlandoans co-create social and sexual networks both online and offline. Urban and sub-urban landscapes have transformed into hybrid "techno-scapes" overlaying "the electronic, the emotional and the social with the geographic and the physical" (Hjorth, 2011). With or without a car, gay men can still geo-socially cruise Orlando's car-centric, street life with mobile devices. As such emerging media has become more pervasive, it has created new opportunities to quarely visualize Orlando's "technoscape" through phone photography and hashtag metadata while also blurring lines between the artist and the curator, the player and the game designer. This project particularly has evolved to employ game design as an exhibition tool for the visualization of geo-social photography through hashtag play. Using hashtags as a game mechanic generates metadata that potentially identifies patterns of play and "ways of seeing" across player experiences as they attempt to make meaning of the images they encounter in the game. @deadquarewalking also demonstrates the potential of game design and geo-social, photo-sharing applications to illuminate new ways of documenting and witnessing the urban landscapes that we both collectively and uniquely inhabit. 'In Irish culture, “quare” can mean “very” or “extremely” or it can be a spelling of the rural or Southern pronunciation of the word “queer.” Living in the American Southeast, I personally relate more to the term “quare” versus “queer.” Cultural theorist E. Patrick Johnson (2001) also argues for “quareness” as a way to question the subjective bias of whiteness in queer studies that risks discounting the lived experiences and material realities of people of color. Though I do not identify as a person of color and would be categorized as white or European American, “quareness” has an important critical application for considering how Orlando's urban design is intersectionally racialized, gendered and classed.
M.F.A.
Masters
Visual Arts and Design
Arts and Humanities
Emerging Media; Digital Media