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A substantial amount of the BA Photography course work is academic work concerning photographic theory and critical readings of visual culture. Below is a representative sample of essay abstracts with links to MS Word files of the complete essays.
Postmodernism (Abstract)
Tracy O'Brien
This essay discusses how photography was in the main perceived as evidence of the real since it’s introduction in 1839. Sontag’s claim that ‘Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it’ was deemed true, especially pre-digital technology. How culture and psychology influence what evidence actually is, photography as evidence, is investigated and time and place will be proven to be important factors in the investigation. Mizoeff states that ‘with the rise of computer imaging and the creation of digital means to manipulate the photograph, we can … say that photography is dead’, but this new technology is only one factor in how photography is used as evidence.
Due to the postmodern era evolving with the simulacrum and digital imagery and manipulation, photography is not as easily as accepted as evidence, as emphatically as it previously was, by the general public. Photo manipulation was always a tool available to the photographer and printer, but as it was not widely known about or widely exploited. Society in general accepted photography as representing the reality of a person, event or object. However, culture, the ruling classes, psychology, politics and semiotics, among others, all played and still play their role in the evidence that is available and accepted in a photographic image.
Photography as Evidence (abstract)
Ciaran Cooney
This essay examines the role that photography has played as a tool for gathering evidence, as well as the changes it has undertaken to adapt to such uses. The essay gathers together the various evidential practices where photography established itself in as outlined by a number of well known photographers and theorists, most notably John Tagg. The essay details the developments of photography from its earliest uses as evidence in the mid 19th century to digital age of the late 20th century, where its authenticity has been questioned, particularly relating to the manipulation of images and its credibility in the law.
The essay also outlines the importance of the recognition of photographs as evidence to 20th century histories, as explained by Peter Burke, as well as examining its uses in the various social institutions that spawned from the industrial revolution.
The essay concludes with the doubts and possible attitudes towards the authenticity of photography as ‘evidence’. Photography’s basic principals, as a tool that only records a ‘fraction of reality’ is also discussed, as well as the attempts to discredit its image in other commercial medias. There is no doubt however, that photographs have provided an enormous contribution to the purpose of providing evidence, which has occurred since photography’s invention a 160 years ago.
Photography as evidence
By Sinead O’Neill
This essay discusses the different uses photography has had in the past as relation to evidence from the court room to the history book. Photography has had a great influence on the establishment of the American police force and the creation of of many record offices such as the Central Criminal Record Office and many Regional Record Centres through the use of photography to document fingerprint impressions and portraits of criminals.This development was due to the belief in the twentieth century that photographs could not lie and what they portrayed was fact, not to be questioned as Tagg noted photography was ‘ a natural mechanism producing natural images whose truth was guarenteed’.
Photography was also a good source of evidence as it does not exclude parts of the image such as people would. It captures not only the subject but everything in its vicinity resulting in the idea that we could be capturing an important moment in history completely unknown to ourselves. The esssay also looks at how the camera itself cannot lie however it is effected by the influences and opinions of the photographer. As stated by Collier and Collier the camera ‘ is a tool of both selectivity and no selectivity at all’. The question of how ‘true’ images are today is also called into question and if they should be used as evidence such as the images of executions of the Commune by Appert which were staged but were still used as evidence of the brutality of those times. This question can never truelly be answered and is left to personal opinion.
Michel Foucault and the Panopticon
Anna Bloxham
In order to examine Michel Foucault’s writings on the Panopticon, this essay defines ‘postmodernism’ in two ways. Firstly, as a time period which has its beginnings in the 1970s, and, secondly, as phenomena that occur within this time period that display certain caracteristics of postmodern thought. These characteristics include movements to challenge widespread conceptions about gender, issues regarding mass media, surveillance and the dynamics of authority, as well as the perceived overlap between representations and reality, the increasing visual nature of human experience, and the dominance of the image in postmodern society.
This essay examines the postmodern features of Michel Foucault’s essay ‘Discipline’ (published in the book Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison). Foucault’s essay outlines a history of disciplinary methods and institutions that have led to the formation of a disciplinary society. He then focuses on the Panopticon (a prison design proposed by Jeremy Bentham in which the eprisoners’ knowledge that there was a possibility they were being observed was key to its disciplinary method), in which he identifies the ‘see/being seen dyad’ (where being able to see, while remaining invisible to the subject of your observation, is the key to exercising authority) as central to its functioning.
This essay demonstrates that Foucault’s discussion of the Panopticon covers a number of postmodern concerns by addressing issues such as surveillance, visibility and visual power, as well as the dynamics of authority.