In this research I examine, mainly focusing on representation in storytelling, how certain aspects of a persons identity in relation to the social environment gives us different modes of discrimination and privileges. I have interviewed individuals around Sweden, during 2020 to 2022, between the age span of 4 to 80 years old concerning societal and familial upbringing. I choose to focus on upbringing since how we reflect about what has shaped us tells a lot about a person and the society. What struck me during the research and the interviews is that we live at the same time, at different places, with different identities, resources and capacities giving us different experiences and views of the world. With vastly different lives: what makes us able to relate to each other? Is it our ability to feel? To feel joy, irritation or loneliness. That no matter how one's life is we all have feelings, that perhaps gives us a chance to recognize, mirror and to empathize with each other? The project resulted in six textile sculptures and eighteen photos of the textile sculptured fictional characters each photographed in their own everyday life, in “their own reality”, in different places around Sweden. The sculptures, their individual jobs, studies, unemployment and places are inspired by the interviews and the research.

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This practice-based thesis presents the results of experimental research devoted to ethnic tourism among the Kayan minority and has involved the interconnection of artistic and anthropological languages. Known worldwide for the traditional female custom of wearing a long coiled brass necklace aimed at causing a considerable extension to the neck, the Kayan are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group originally from Burma. Due to the prolonged civil war in their own homeland, a large number of Kayan recently fled from Burma to refuge in neighbouring Thailand. Here, over the past years, in response to the “incisive” tourism policy promoted by the Thai government in the northern areas of the country, some families, abandoning the refugee camps where they were hosted, have been resettled in several new villages open to tourists, on payment of a modest entrance fee. Here the Kayan, their culture and their daily life, have been transformed into an authentic tourist attraction capable of drawing about 10,000 visitors a year. Founded on a strictly “visual media primitivist” approach and inspired by its peculiar aesthetics – as systematically presented in the first, theoretical, section of the thesis –, the enquiry involves a multimedia perspective. In such a context, analogue photography and filmmaking, creative writing and sound composition have been combined to give concrete shape to an original artwork firmly grounded in ethnographic practice. The choice, far from being a solely arbitrary and subjective option, has indeed been motivated by the critical employment of specific theoretical assumptions of some of the most recent streams of anthropology and epistemology of the human sciences. The multidisciplinary methodology adopted to develop the research, as well as the multifaceted language employed to display its results, represent an innovative and experimental way of approaching the complex theme of cultural identity in present-day Asian contexts, as well as of highlighting the most aesthetic and philosophic implications connected to the revival of analogue vintage media in contemporary artistic practice.

This thesis is an enquiry into the conditions in which various understandings of the newly introduced but vaguely grasped Western notion of ‘art’ emerged and sustained themselves in the name of cultural reproduction in early twentieth-century China. This Western concept of art was translated into Chinese as ‘meishu’, a neologism originally coined in Japanese kanji, and regarded as the embodiment of the ‘national essence’. Through a close examination of five art-related publishing events—the publication of the nationalistic journal Guocui xuebao; the launch of the art periodical Shenzhou guoguangji; the endeavours to compile a book collection on art, Meishu congshu; the making of the text Zhonguo yishujia zhenglüe which claimed to be a history book of Chinese ‘meishu’; and an example of image appropriation from Stephen Bushell’s Chinese Art—this thesis explores the ways in which different ‘neologistic imaginations’ of the term ‘meishu’ were constructed through publishing practices attempting to preserve and reproduce the ‘national essence’, by creating from the existent tradition a category of ‘art’ equivalent to that in the European West. Unlike previous scholarship, which deems any understanding of ‘meishu’ that deviated from the ‘authentic’ European model a ‘misconception’, this thesis sees these disparate understandings of ‘meishu’ as equally valid statements competing for dominance in the discursive field of art. This thesis thus argues that there existed at least three modes of utterances regarding the notion of ‘meishu’ in early twentieth-century China, and that the success of any such given utterance depended upon the acceptance of the authentic quality argued in its strategy of cultural reproduction. This thesis hence not only offers a detailed analysis of each publishing event, but also provides an interpretative framework within which the recognition of these utterances can be analysed by their strategic approaches to claiming cultural authenticity.

The Longest Journey is an experimental Master essay which consists of 27 images with accompanying texts. Part of the images are digital photographs and part of them are images created through a special process involving different software tools – mainly Adobe Photoshop and Google Earth. The texts comment on how the images themselves were created and how one might understand what they are and how they function as aesthetic objects and as potential catalysts for thought. / <p>The essay was published as part of a Master of Fine Art Degree exhibition with the same title. For an English translation of it and photographic documentation of the exhibition, please contact: markus.bowie@gmail.com</p>

The master thesis is focused on recent inosculation of photography and modern information technologies and also on a daptation of photography to current trends in communication. Special emphasis is set on fine-art photography. Besides delimitation of problem the first part of the text is dedicated to foundation and history of photography where the author refers to dramatic changes that had taken place in the early beginnings. The second part is dealing with contemporary phenomenon - social networks and their moving into the virtual space of the Internet during last decade. The author aims on key aspects of social networks which have a significant influence when in combination with photography. The next part shortly deals with problems of copyright that show up in relation to digital photography. Part of text is devoted analysis of several selected systems specialized in fine-art photography publishing and eventually their selling. The author describes their significant attributes, principles on which they are based and mentions differences among each other. The fundamental part of the document is focused on practical view of interconnection between fine-art photography and digital information technologies whereas the ideas relates to pieces of knowledge gained from several selected and interviewed...

Den här studien undersöker hur webbplatsen kan användas i syfte att förmedla en varumärkesidentitet hos företag inom kultursektorn. Fotografiska, en privat konsthall för samtida fotokonst, belägen i Stockholm, publicerar på sin webbplats texter om varje utställning som konsthallen arrangerar. Undersökningen utgår från antagandet att såväl den omgivande kontexten som innehållet i texterna bidrar till att skapa en varumärkesidentitet. Genom en multimodal och narrativ diskursanalys av webbplatsen och utställningstexterna analyserar jag hur denna identitet realiseras i samspelet mellan semiotiska och narrativa resurser och vilken bild den förmedlar av Fotografiska till betraktaren. Resultatet visar, enligt min tolkning, att Fotografiska använder webbplatsen i identitetsskapande syfte genom porträtteringen av fotokonsten och dess centrala aktörer som bärare av ett antal socioestetiska kärnvärden; minimalism, intellektualitet, exklusivitet, tradition och kunnighet. / This study examines how websites can be used for corporate branding purposes of institutions in the cultural field. It is based on my analytical findings on the website of Fotografiska, a gallery for contemporary fine art photography in central Stockholm. The thesis is based on the claim that both the surrounding context and the content of the exhibition texts plays a crucial role in the creation of a corporate brand for art galleries. Therefore my intention here is to show how Fotografiska all together use semiotic and narrative resources on their website in order to brand themselves. Supported by the findings from my sociosemiotic discourse analysis I argue that the extensive portraying of fine art photography and its key figures, maintains a few artistic core values that are characteristic for the branding of Fotografiska. Those are minimalism, intellectuality, exclusiveness, tradition and expertise.

Today, it is assumed that the one of the main functions of photography is only to show how the world changes with time, to capture the cities, people, life - everything that coexists with a man. Actually modern photography carries a deeper meaning. In fact, photography took a special place and became an integral part of every human life in the XXI century. The main objective of the master's work is research of an art photography, as a consequence and a context of the world’s photography. My objective is to examine the contribution that studied photographers have invested to the world’s photography. Tasks of the master's work are: - to examine the creative path of studied photographers - to examine the art properties of photography and its stylistic features - to examine the expressive features of the art photography and the frame structure / На сегодняшний день, принято считать, что одна из основных функций фотографии – лишь показать изменения мира во времени, запечатлеть города, людей, быт – все то, что сосуществует рядом с человеком. Но фотография это не только запись истории нашей жизни, но и вид искусства. На самом деле, современная фотография несет более глубокую смысловую и идейно–художественную нагрузку, которая в полной мере не изучена в российском искусствознании. Основной целью исследования является изучение творчества современных фотографов Р. Гибсона (1939, США) и Д. Морияма (1938, Япония) и их взаимосвязи с авангардными и поставангардными тенденциями XX века. Для достижения поставленной цели будут решены ряд задач: во–первых, обнародование в российском искусствознании нового материала о творческой деятельности двух значительных авторов современной художественной фотографии Р. Гибсона (1939, США) и Д. Морияма (1938, Япония). Во–вторых, выявление основных истоков их твоческого метода – авангарда (идеи Ман Рэя, Жака – Андре Буаффара, Билла Брандта) и «второго авангарда» ( позиции А. Хичкока и Д. Линча); в–третьих, описание и попытка классификации основных произведений этих фотографов.