Browsing by Subject "photography"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Borderland / Stills and Motion. MFA Thesis University of Minnesota, Department of Art
    (University of Minnesota, Department of Art, 2017-05) Tavera Castro, Xavier
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    Dialectic
    (2018) Geenen, Brooks
    Habitat loss due to land use is the single greatest threat to biodiversity, and virtually all of earth’s ecosystems have now been dramatically transformed through human actions. More land was converted to cropland in the thirty years after 1950 than in the 150 years between 1700 and 1850. A 2013 estimate illustrated that humans are currently using 34% of the global land area for their agricultural needs, and human appropriated land use has converted over 60% of temperate forests. Through this work, I will be examining the conversation between humans and our impact on the natural world with a specific concentration on the habitat loss of birds. Using photography I will visually examine and illustrate our relationship with the natural world; how humans appropriation of land and resources is leading to the habitat loss of many bird species. This research is about questioning and examining, it is not to denounce the human race, but serves to photographically represent the key issues of habitat loss and how we can change.
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    Imagining Bodies: Technological Visions of Displaced Minds in French Speculative Fiction
    (2019-05) Mitchell, Lia
    The twenty-first century has seen a dramatic shift in visual culture resulting from the expansion of digital technology, a shift that is still in progress today. A similarly seismic shift occurred in the mid-nineteenth century, with the introduction of photography, and around the fin-de-siècle, with the emergence of cinema. A number of scholars (including Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Virilio, Jonathan Crary, Friedrich Kittler, and Vivian Sobchack) have argued that technological changes in visual media constitute new ways of seeing and consequently new ways of being in the world. Imagining Bodies examines the ways that these changes in visual culture emerge in representations of the body and of vision in French speculative fiction from around the time of the Third Republic. In particular, this thesis discusses visual paradigms associated with photography and film around the time of their emergence, and seeks reflections and echoes of those paradigms in textual descriptions of bodily experience. Such descriptions are especially suggestive in fictional works that problematize the relationship between body and mind, either by imagining a mind transposed or transplanted into a new and strange body, or imagining what lies beyond the limits of human sensory perception by removing minds from bodies altogether. By recognizing the ways that visual technology informs and structures our understanding of our world and our selves, we can better recognize the effects of new visual technology and their importance for our contemporary period.
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    My Easy Year: Breast Cancer, Narrative Reckoning, and the Art of Creating a Dissertation
    (2023-01) Shopa, Amanda
    A serious illness acts as a break to one’s routine and wrecks a life’s narrative (Frank, 2013). A serious illness can force one to examine the weave of their life—past, present, and future—in unexpected ways (Lorde, 1980/2020). I learned this firsthand when, late in my doctoral studies, I was diagnosed with breast cancer after a routine mammogram screening. The diagnosis, treatment, and on-going side effects left me with one question: How am I supposed to get through this (creating a dissertation) after going through that (cancer)? To answer that question, I turned to arts-based research practices (Leavy, 2015; Loveless, 2019; Springgay & Irwin, 2005). In this non-traditional “braided” dissertation (Miller, 2021), I use creative writing (personal stories, journal entries, and doctor’s charting notes), textile arts (knitting, felting, weaving, and quilting), and photographic practices (black-and-white darkroom work and the cyanotype process) to examine my past, present, and future. At the same time, I incorporate research and theory from medical sociology to ground my personal experience in a larger cultural context. I explore the illness narratives I tell (Frank, 2013) and consider how they align with or resist American breast cancer culture and the expectation that women are made “better” by having cancer (Ehrenreich, 2001; Sulik, 2011). I argue that there is no conclusion to breast cancer, even though the broader culture may call for one. Ultimately, this dissertation resists dominant breast cancer culture and adds nuance and complexity to breast cancer stories. It also demonstrates how artistic practices and academic research can be used to make sense of the existential crisis that a serious illness can trigger in one’s life.